“Non-violence is not inaction. It is not discussion. It is not for the timid or weak. Non-violence is hard work.”

Do not romanticize the poor. We are all people, human beings subject to the same temptations and faults as all others. Our poverty damages our dignity.

Students must have initiative; they should not be mere imitators. They must learn to think and act for themselves – and be free.

I’m not going to ask for anything unless the workers want it. If they want it, they’ll ask for it.

Years of misguided teaching have resulted in the destruction of the best in our society, in our cultures and in the environment.

If you’re not frightened that you might fail, you’ll never do the job. If you’re frightened, you’ll work like crazy.

What is at stake is human dignity. If a man is not accorded respect he cannot respect himself and if he does not respect himself, he cannot demand it.

The only ones who make things change are fanatics. If you’re not a fanatic around here, you can’t cut it.

We are suffering. We have suffered. And we are not afraid to suffer in order to win our cause.

We draw our strength from the very despair in which we have been forced to live. We shall endure.

Dr. King challenged us to work for a greater humanity. I only hope that we are worthy of his challenge.

From the depth of need and despair, people can work together, can organize themselves to solve their own problems and fill their own needs with dignity and strength.

When we are really honest with ourselves we must admit our lives are all that really belong to us. So it is how we use our lives that determines the kind of men we are.

Real education should consist of drawing the goodness and the best out of our own students. What better books can there be than the book of humanity?

I’ve always maintained that it isn’t the form that’s going to make the difference. It isn’t the rule or the procedure or the ideology, but it’s human beings that will make it.

If you give yourself totally to the nonviolence struggle for peace and justice you also find that people give you their hearts and you will never go hungry and never be alone.

It’s amazing how people can get so excited about a rocket to the moon and not give a damn about smog, oil leaks, the devastation of the environment with pesticides, hunger, disease.

We can never, even by the strictest examination, get completely behind the secret springs of action.

To be is to do.

The merit in action lies in finishing it to the end.

I’m a doer, and whether it was the tsunami in Sri Lanka or the earthquake in Indonesia, I was always saying, I should be there; I should be helping out.

An action committed in anger is an action doomed to failure.

One who cannot laugh, cannot meditate. Laughter is a certain exuberance of your energy. Meditation is the ultimate exuberance of your energy without physical action.

Your Actions and Your Life Are Not Transactions. Be Life, Not a Marketplace.

Essentially, karma means moving life from compulsive reaction to conscious action.