Humanity Quotes

An individual has not begun to live until he can rise above the narrow horizons of his particular individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.

Life's most persistent and urgent question is: 'What are you doing for others?'

Human progress comes through the tireless efforts and the persistent work of dedicated individuals who are willing to be co-workers with God.

I would not have you believe for one minute tonight that there are not white persons of good will in the South.

I have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day, right down in Georgia and Mississippi and Alabama, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to live together as brothers.

Be concerned about your brother. You may not be on strike. But either we go up together, or we go down together.

We must either learn to live together as brothers or we are all going to perish together as fools.

Man is a child of God, made in His image, and therefore must be respected as such. Until men see this everywhere, until nations see this everywhere, we will be fighting wars.

One day somebody should remind us that, even though there may be political and ideological differences between us, the Vietnamese are our brothers, the Russians are our brothers, the Chinese are our brothers; and one day we've got to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, militarism and economic exploitation are incapable of being conquered.

We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for the victims of our nation and for those it calls "enemy," for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers.

Some people are suffering. Some people are hungry this morning. Some people are still living with segregation and discrimination this morning. I'm going to preach about it. I'm going to fight for them. I'll die for them if necessary, because I got my guidelines clear.

The God that I serve and the God that called me to preach told me that every now and then I'll have to go to jail for them. Every now and then I'll have to agonize and suffer for the freedom of his children. I even may have to die for it. But if that's necessary, I'd rather follow the guidelines of God than to follow the guidelines of men.

Together we can and should unite our strength for the wise preservation, not of races in general, but of the one race we all constitute - the human race.

We have inherited a big house, a great world house in which we have to live together - black and white, Easterners and Westerners, Gentiles and Jews, Protestants and Catholics, Moslem and Hindu. If we all learn to do this we, in a real sense, will remain awake through a great revolution.

All that I've said is that we must work for peace, for racial justice, for economic justice, and for brotherhood the world over.

The world in which we live is geographically one. The great challenge now is to make it one in terms of brotherhood.

Our aim must never be to defeat or humiliate the white man, but to win his friendship and understanding. 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.

The only normalcy that we will settle for is the normalcy that recognizes the dignity and worth of all of God's children.

I cannot forget that the Nobel Peace Prize was not just something taking place, but it was a commission - a commission to work harder than I had ever worked before for the brotherhood of Man.