I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of judging individuals based on their character rather than their skin color.
Martin Luther King Jr.'s quote advocates for a future where equality prevails, and individuals are assessed by their personal qualities, values, and actions, rather than superficial criteria such as race. It reflects a vision of societal harmony and justice, urging people to look beyond skin deep to understand the true essence of humanity.
In practice
During a speech on civil rights, one might use this quote to highlight the importance of equality and justice.
This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love.
Music is the best consolation for a despaired man
We must meet the forces of hate with the power of love.
We may have all come on different ships, but we're in the same boat now.
Israel... is one of the great outpost of democracy in the world
One of the greatest casualties of the war in Vietnam is the Great Society... shot down on the battlefield of Vietnam.
A straight oar looks bent in the water. It matters not merely that we see a thing, but how we see it.
Let us admit, without bitterness, that the individual has his distinct interests and can, without felony, stipulate for those interests and defend them. The present has its pardonable amount of egotism; momentary life has its claims, and cannot be expected to sacrifice itself incessantly to the future. The generation which is in its turn passing over the earth is not forced to abridge its life for the sake of the generations, its equals after all, whose turn shall come later on.
The good man's past begins to change so that his forgiven sins and remembered sorrows take on the quality of Heaven.
Society: an inferno of saviors!
For there are two possible reactions to social ostracism - either a man emerges determined to be better, purer, and kindlier or he goes bad, challenges the world and does even worse things. The last is by far the commonest reaction to stigma.
Each memory is like a paper flower stowed up a magician's sleeve: invisible one moment and then so substantial and florid the next I cannot imagine how it stayed hidden all this time. And like those paper flowers, once they've been let loose in the world, the memories are impossible to tuck away again.
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