“It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me, and I think that’s pretty important.”

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.

It is cheerful to God when you rejoice or laugh from the bottom of your heart.

There is no gain without struggle.

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.

A lie cannot live.

We must use time creatively – and forever realize that the time is always hope to do great things.

A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.

Quietly endure, silently suffer and patiently wait.

I have a dream that one day little black boys and girls will be holding hands with little white boys and girls.

Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.

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

Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.

There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.

Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane.

Not everybody can be famous but everybody can be great, because greatness is determined by service.

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.

Pray: To ask the laws of the universe to be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.

If you have to make laws to hurt a group of people just to prove your morals and faith, then you have no true morals or faith to prove.

Men may make laws to hinder and fetter the ballot, but men cannot make laws that will bind or retard the growth of manhood.

The grandest of all laws is the law of progressive development. Under it, in the wide sweep of things, men grow wiser as they grow older, and societies better.

The denial of an objective moral law, based on the compulsion to deny the existence of God, results ultimately in the denial of evil itself.

Once the light of our awareness is cast on any darkness, then it cannot hide and it cannot remain. Such is the law of consciousness.

History is a grim reminder of what happens to those who think they have no law but themselves.

Whenever you try to break God’s moral law, you end up breaking yourself and hurting others – all while proving His law in the process.