Martin Luther King Jr.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.

The time is always right to do what is right.

Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.

A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.

True peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice.

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.

I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality.

We are not makers of history. We are made by history.

The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character—that is the goal of true education.

He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.

An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.

Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon, which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it. It is a sword that heals.

The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of freedom, it produces enslavement.

We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love.

Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle.