Language is the soul of intellect, and reading is the essential process by which that intellect is cultivated beyond the commonplace experiences of everyday life.
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If a man hasn't discovered something that he will die for, he isn't fit to live.
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War is a poor chisel to carve out tomorrow.
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Whatever career you may choose for yourself - doctor, lawyer, teacher - let me propose an avocation to be pursued along with it. Become a dedicated fighter for civil rights. Make it a central part of your life. It will make you a better doctor, a better lawyer, a better teacher. It will enrich your spirit as nothing else possibly can. It will give you that rare sense of nobility that can only spring from love and selflessly helping your fellow man. Make a career of humanity.Commit yourself to the noble struggle for human rights.You will make a greater person of yourself, a greater nation of your country and a finer world to live in.
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In no sense do I advocate evading or defying the law ... That would lead to anarchy. An individual who breaks a law that his conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.
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At times, life is hard, as hard as crucible steel. It has its bleak and painful moments. Like the ever flowing water of a river, life has its moments of drought and its moments of flood. Like the ever-changin cycle of the seasons, life has the soothing warmth of the summers and the piercing chill of its winters. But through it all, God walks with us. Never forget that God is able to lift you from the fatigue of despair to the buoyancy of hope, and transform dark and desolate valleys into sunlit paths of inner peace.
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The time is always right to do what is right.
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We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people.
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I’ve seen too much hate to want to hate, myself, and every time I see it, I say to myself, hate is too great a burden to bear. Somehow we must be able to stand up against our most bitter opponents and say:”We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We will meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will and we will still love you.... But be assured that we’ll wear you down by our capacity to suffer, and one day we will win our freedom. We will not only win freedom for ourselves; we will appeal to your heart and conscience that we will win you in the process, and our victory will be a double victory.
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The quality, not the longevity, of one's life is what is important.
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The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
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The mystic prophets of the absolute cannot save us. Sustained by our history and traditions, we must save ourselves, at whatever risk of heresy or blasphemy. We can find solace in the memorable representation of the human struggle against the absolute in the finest scene in the greatest of American novels. I refer of course to the scene when Huckleberry Finn decides that the '' plain hand of Providence '' requires him to tell Miss Watson where her runaway slave Jim is to be found. Huck writes his letter of betrayal to Miss Watson and feels '' all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever felt so in my life, and I knowed I could pray now. '' He sits there for a while thinking '' how good it was all this happened so, and how near I come to being lost and going to hell .'' Then Huck begins to think about Jim and the rush of the great river and the talking and the singing and the laughing and friendship. '' Then I happened to look around and see that paper. . . . I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a-trembling because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself: 'All right, then, I'll go to hell' - and tore it up .''
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Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
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Everybody can be great... because anybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. you only need a heart full of grace. a soul generated by love.
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Pity may represent little more than the impersonal concern which prompts the mailing of a check, but true sympathy is the personal concern which demands the giving of one's soul.
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There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love.
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Whatever your life's work is, do it well. A man should do his job so well that the living, the dead, and the unborn could do it no better.
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One of the greatest casualties of the war in Vietnam is the Great Society ... shot down on the battlefield of Vietnam.
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It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important.
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A riot is the language of the unheard.
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When you are right you cannot be too radical; when you are wrong, you cannot be too conservative.
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Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.
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We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.
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For you all think God is one who rewards good and punishes evil, but I say to you that God is one who loves you and has compassion for everyone. You just have to pray to Him and believe in Him. He will always be your guiding light.
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Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal.
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I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the 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 prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of 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 someone else's freedom who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a 'more convenient season.'
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I have a dream, that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today
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I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character
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I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.
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God is not merely interestd in the freedom of brown men, yellow men, red men and black men.He is interested in the freedom of the whole human race.
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