Few speeches in American history have stirred the collective heart of the country quite Like Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I have a dream” speech in 1963. Everyone remembers the line, “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.” King’s dream lives on today in the heart’s and minds of a grateful nation that, to this day, still works to end discrimination and prejudice wherever it may be. Unfortunately, 53 years after King delivered that amazing speech in Washington, racial tension still exist. Today as we honor the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., take his words to heart. We are all humans, no matter our race, gender, or creed. Here are
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“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”
“I have decided to stick to love…Hate is too great a burden to bear.”
“We must live together as brothers or perish together as fools.”
“Science investigates; religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge, which is power; religion gives man wisdom, which is control. Science deals mainly with facts; religion deals mainly with values. The two are not rivals.”
“People fail to get along because they fear each other; they fear each other because they don’t know each other; they don’t know each other because they have not communicated with each other.”
“No person has the right to rain on your dreams.”
“Faith is taking the first step even when you can’t see the whole staircase.”
“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
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“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”
“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.”
“Let no man pull you so low as to hate him.”
“Only in the darkness can you see the stars.”
“There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right.”
“Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”
“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.”
“Intelligence plus character-that is the goal of true education.”
“We must come to see that the end we seek is a society at peace with itself, a society that can live with its conscience.”
“Everybody can be great…because anybody can serve. 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.”
“A man who won’t die for something is not fit to live.”
“No one really knows why they are alive until they know what they’d die for.”
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“Forgiveness is not an occasional act, it is a constant attitude.”
“Those who are not looking for happiness are the most likely to find it, because those who are searching forget that the surest way to be happy is to seek happiness for others.”
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
“If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as a Michaelangelo 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.”
“We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.”
“There comes a time when silence is betrayal.”