Life Quotes
Racial segregation as a way of life did not come about as a natural result of hatred between the races immediately after the Civil War. There were no laws segregating the races then.
There is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect.
Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with a lost opportunity.
We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late.
There are mountainous obstacles still separating Negroes from a normal existence. Yet one element in stabilizing his life would be an understanding of and easy access to the means to develop a family related in size to his community environment and to the income potential he can command.
The great temptation of life and the great tragedy of life is that so often we allow the without of our lives to absorb the within of our lives.
All life is interrelated, and all men are interdependent. The agony of the poor diminishes the rich, and the salvation of the poor enlarges the rich.
If we assume that life is worth living and that man has a right to survive, then we must find an alternative to war.
Why should there be hunger and privation in any land, in any city, at any table when man has the resources and the scientific know-how to provide all mankind with the basic necessities of life?
Dark yesterday can be transformed into bright tomorrow. When you know God, you can stand up amid the agonies and burdens of life and not despair.
One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land.
This note was a promise that all men, yes black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Less than a century ago the laborer had no rights, little or no respect, and led a life which was socially submerged and barren.
A court order can only declare rights; it can never thoroughly deliver them. And only when people themselves begin to act, are rights which are on thin paper given life blood. And so the Negro must supplement all that is done through legislation, through voting, and through the courts with non-violent direct action.
If man fails to reorientate his life around moral and ethical values he may well destroy himself by the misuse of his own instrument.
A few years ago in the slum areas of Atlanta, a Negro guitarist used to sing almost daily: "Been down so long that down don't bother me." This is the type of negative freedom and resignation that often engulfs the life of the oppressed.
If democracy is to have breadth of meaning, it is necessary to adjust this inequity. It is not only moral, but it is also intelligent. We are wasting and degrading human life by clinging to archaic thinking.
Occasionally in life one develops a conviction so precious and meaningful that he will stand on it till the end.
I refuse to accept the idea that man is mere flotsam and jetsam in the river of life, unable to influence the unfolding events which surround him.
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