10 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Quotes to Do the Right Thing | Showers’ Blessing Picspire | Jacqui Showers

Today we celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who was committed to live out his purpose in service to humankind without fear of the consequences to his own life. As you kick-off your week in celebration of Dr. King’s life and legacy, be committed to rise above yourself in truly living out your dream of service to others by doing what is right regardless of its political, social or cultural consequences. These are 10 quotes by Dr. King to help you through your journey.

1. “You may be 38 years old, as I happen to be. And one day, some great opportunity stands before you and calls you to stand up for some great principle, some great issue, some great cause. And you refuse to do it because you are afraid…. You refuse to do it because you want to live longer…. You’re afraid that you will lose your job, or you are afraid that you will be criticized or that you will lose your popularity, or you’re afraid that somebody will stab you, or shoot at you or bomb your house; so you refuse to take the stand. Well, you may go on and live until you are 90, but you’re just as dead at 38 as you would be at 90. And the cessation of breathing in your life is but the belated announcement of an earlier death of the spirit.”
2. “The time is always right to do the right thing”
3. “On some positions, cowardice asks the question, is it expedient? And then expedience comes along and asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? Conscience asks the question, is it right? There comes a time when one must take the position that is neither safe nor politic nor popular, but he must do it because conscience tells him it is right.”
4. “Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.”
5. “The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was: ‘If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?’ But…the good Samaritan reversed the question: ‘If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?”
6. “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.”
7. “Not everybody can be famous but everybody can be great, because greatness is determined by service.”
8. “The question is not if we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. The nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.”
9. “Use me, God. Show me how to take who I am, who I want to be, and what I can do, and use it for a purpose greater than myself.”
10. “The end of life is not to be happy, nor to achieve pleasure and avoid pain, but to do the will of God, come what may.

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