Martin Luther King Jr on Deep Work Quotes

"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 not do it better."

"We must concentrate not merely on the negative expulsion of war, but on the positive affirmation of peace."

"We must build dikes of courage to hold back the flood of fear."

"Whatever career you may choose for yourself - doctor, lawyer, teacher - let me propose an overriding education which will help you to do it better."

"We are prone to judge success by the index of our salaries or the size of our automobiles rather than by the quality of our service and relationship to humanity."

"One should seek to do his life's work as if God Almighty called him at this particular moment in history to do it."

"We must develop a world perspective."

"True peace is not merely the absence of tension: it is the presence of justice."

"Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity."

"Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions."

"Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable... Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals."

"To save man from the morass of propaganda, in my opinion, is one of the chief aims of education."

"Faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the whole staircase."

"An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity."

"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."

"The quality, not the longevity, of one's life is what is important."

"Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon, which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it. It is a sword that heals."

"Take the first step in faith. You don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step."

"All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence."

"Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will."

"Set yourself earnestly to see what you are made to do, and then do it with all of the concentrated attention of your mind."

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."

"The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character - that is the goal of true education."

"A man who won't die for something is not fit to live."

"The major problem of life is that of learning how to keep the soul’s engine running when the fuel tank is empty."

"The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."

"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."

"The hard discipline of nonviolence is the way to a more perfect union."

"We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope."

"No work is insignificant. All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity."

"The sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality."

"If you can't fly then run, if you can't run then walk, if you can't walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward."

"Everything that we see is a shadow cast by that which we do not see."