“We are not makers of history. We are made by history.”

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.

Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.

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.

The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.

Intelligence plus character-that is the goal of true education.

If you lose hope, somehow you lose the vitality that keeps moving, you lose that courage to be, that quality that helps you go on in spite of it all. And so today I still have a dream.

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

The 1990’s sure aren’t like the 1980’s.

Any fourth grade history student knows socialism has failed in every country, at every time in history.

The path towards a free society has not been simple. There are tragic and glorious pages in our history.

Mankind’s history has proved from one era to another that the true criterion of leadership is spiritual. Men are attracted by spirit. By power, men are forced. Love is engendered by spirit. By power anxieties are created.

History is more or less bunk. It’s tradition. We don’t want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker’s dam is the history we made today.

You may have to risk your own life to make such a historic accomplishment.

My basic notion regarding the matter of historical recognition is basically, it’s a matter that should be left to the good hands of historians and experts.

It is with nations as it is with individuals. A book of history is a book of sermons.