Quotes about Purpose
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.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
As a young man with most of my life ahead of me, I decided early to give my life to something eternal and absolute. Not to these little gods that are here today and gone tomorrow. But to God who is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
Oh, the worst of all tragedies is not to die young, but to live until I am seventy-five and yet not ever truly to have lived.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
You may well ask: "Why direct action? Why sit-ins, marches and so forth? Isn't negotiation a better path?" You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
Unless you have found something in life to live for that is more important to you than your own life, you will always be a slave. For all another man needs to do is threaten to take your life to get you to do his bidding.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
If you have not discovered something you are willing to die for, then you are not fit to live.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
If a man is called to be a street sweeper. He should sweep streets even as a Michelangelo painted , or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all hosts of heaven and earth pause to say; Here lives a great sweeper who did his job well .
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michealangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare composed poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, "Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
My call to the ministry was not a miraculous or supernatural something. On the contrary it was an inner urge calling me to serve humanity.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
We can all get more together than we can apart. And this is the way we gain power. Power is the ability to achieve purpose, power is the ability to effect change, and we need power.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
What matters is not how long you live…but how you live.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
If a man has not discovered something that he could die for, he's not fit to live.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.