MLK Quotes About Service
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.
Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’
You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love.
Everybody can be great…because anybody can serve.
The time is always right to do what is right.
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
We may have all come on different ships, but we’re in the same boat now.
Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend.
If you can’t fly, then run. If you can’t run, then walk. If you can’t walk, then crawl. But whatever you do, you have to keep moving forward.
The time is always right to do what is right.
No one really knows why they are alive until they know what they’d die for.
I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low.
The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.
We must learn to live together as brothers, or we will perish together as fools.
The true neighbor will risk his position, his prestige and even his life for the welfare of others.
We are not makers of history. We are made by history.
The time is always right to do the right thing.
I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality.
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.
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 hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, ‘Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.’
Whatever your life’s work is, do it well. A man should do his job so well that the living, the dead, and the unborn could do it no better.
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.
We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.’
In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.
The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.
The time is always right to do what is right.
A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.
Intelligence plus character – that is the goal of true education.
Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.
The quality, not the longevity, of one’s life is what is important.
Nonviolence means avoiding not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. You not only refuse to shoot a man, but you refuse to hate him.
Only in the darkness can you see the stars.
Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.
We must build dikes of courage to hold back the flood of fear.
We may have all come on different ships, but we’re in the same boat now.
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.
A man who won’t die for something is not fit to live.
One day we will learn that the heart can never be totally right if the head is totally wrong.
We must accept finite disappointment but never lose infinite hope.
Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon.
There comes a time when silence is betrayal.
The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be.
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.
Without love, there is no reason to know anyone, for love will in the end connect us to our neighbors, our children, and our hearts.
Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’