10 of My Favorite Martin Luther King Jr. Quotes

I’ve had a plaque on my office wall for many years. It features a picture taken at Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech at the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963. It also has a button that when pushed starts the speech. I love the sound of it and the words that he spoke (and I love the expression on the faces of visitors to my office when they push the button). If you can’t see (or hear) the video, you can click here to hear it.

Here are 10 of my favorite Martin Luther King Jr. quotes:

1. “Faith is taking the first step even when you can’t see the whole staircase.”
2. “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.”
3. “A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.”
4. “A man who won’t die for something is not fit to live.”
5. “No one really knows why they are alive until they know what they’d die for.”
6. “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.”
7. “There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe nor politic nor popular, but he must take it because his conscience tells him it is right.”
8. “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’”
9. “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
10. “Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle.”

You can read more from my Quotebook right here.