Time Quotes
Where progress for the Negro in America is concerned, there is a tragic misconception of time among whites. They seem to cherish a strange, irrational notion that something in the very flow of time will cure all ills.
I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the white citizen's councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice... who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season.
If I sought to answer all of the criticisms that cross my desk, my secretaries would be engaged in little else in the course of the day, and I would have no time for constructive work.
Unfortunately, when hope diminishes, the hate is often turned most bitterly toward those who originally built up the hope. In all the speaking that I have done in the United States before varied audiences, including some hostile whites, the only time that I have been booed was one night in a Chicago mass meeting by some young members of the Black Power movement.
There is no time for ease and comfort. It is the time to dare and endure.
It is a mistake to try to look too far ahead. The chain of destiny can only be grasped one link at a time.
After a time, civil servants tend to become no longer servants and no longer civil.
When I am abroad, I always make it a rule never to criticize or attack the government of my own country. I make up for lost time when I come home.
No idea is so outlandish that it should not be considered with a searching but at the same time a steady eye.
Curse ruthless time! Curse our mortality. How cruelly short is the allotted span for all we must cram into it!
The stations of uncensored expression are closing down; the lights are going out; but there is still time for those to whom freedom and parliamentary government mean something, to consult together. Let me, then, speak in truth and earnestness while time remains.
I was happy as a child with my toys in my nursery. I been happier every year since I became a man. But this interlude of school makes a somber grey patch upon the chart of my journey. It was a unending spell of worries that did not then seem petty, and of toil uncheered by fruition; a time of discomfort, restriction and purposeless monotony.
Strategy is all very well, but it pays to give thought from time to time to the results.
I am sure that the mistakes of that time will not be repeated; we should probably make another set of mistakes.
The facilities for advanced education must be evened out and multiplied. No one who can take advantage of a higher education should be denied this chance. You cannot conduct a modern community except with an adequate supply of persons upon whose education, whether humane, technical, or scientific, much time and money have been spent.
Time passes swiftly, but is it not joyous to see how great and growing is the treasure we have gathered together, amid the storms and stresses of so many eventful and to millions tragic and terrible years?
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