For Martin Luther King Day

[Amillia]

Ten of King's Quotes


1. If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep
streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed
music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so
well that all the host of heaven and earth will pause to say,
here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.

2. Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both
impractical and immoral. It is impractical because it is a
descending spiral ending in destruction for all. It is immoral
because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his
understanding; it seeks to annihilate rather than to convert.
Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than
love.

3. There is nothing more dangerous than to build a society, with
a large segment of people in that society, who feel that they
have no stake in it; who feel that they have nothing to lose.
People who have a stake in their society, protect that society,
but when they don't have it, they unconsciously want to destroy
it.

4. In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies,
but the silence of our friends.

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

6. Ten thousand fools proclaim themselves into obscurity,
while one wise man forgets himself into immortality.

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

8. The good neighbor looks beyond the external accidents and
discerns those inner qualities that make all men human and,
therefore, brothers.

9. Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have
guided missiles and misguided men.

10. 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.

~Martin Luther King Jr.~