Violence ends by defeating itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers.

War is a poor chisel to carve out tomorrow.

We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak.

Never succumb to the temptation of bitterness.

We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.

All progress is precarious, and the solution of one problem brings us face to face with another problem.

The difference between a dreamer and a visionary is that a dreamer has his eyes closed and a visionary has his eyes open.

The best way to solve any problem is to remove its cause.

Find a voice in a whisper.

No person has the right to rain on your dreams.

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

If I cannot do great things, I can do small things in a great way.

The time is always right to do what is right.

We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is deaf to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: ‘Too late’.

I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate, adding deeper darkness to a night that is already void of stars.

You can have no influence over those for whom you have underlying contempt.

Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.

Lukewarm acceptance is more bewildering than outright rejection.

No individual or nation can stand out boasting of being independent. We are interdependent.

Everything that we see is a shadow cast by that which we do not see.

The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be… The nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.

Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest.

Pity may represent little more than the impersonal concern which prompts the mailing of a check, but true sympathy is the personal concern which demands the giving of one’s soul.

I just want to do God’s will. And he’s allowed me to go to the mountain. And I’ve looked over, and I’ve seen the promised land! I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land.