If I can help somebody as I pass along, if I can cheer somebody with a word or song, if I can show somebody he's traveling wrong, then my living will not be in vain.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of helping others and making a positive impact in their lives.
In this quote, Martin Luther King Jr. highlights the value of selflessness and the fulfillment that comes from aiding others. He suggests that life gains meaning and purpose when we support those around us, whether through encouragement, guidance, or simply spreading joy, and that such acts of kindness make our existence worthwhile.
In practice
Using this quote in a speech about community service.
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.
the other guineahen died of a broken heart and we came to New York. I used to sit at a table,drawing wings with a pencil that kept breaking and i kept remembering how your mind looked when it slept for several years,to wake up asking why. So then you turned into a photograph of somebody who’s trying not to laugh at somebody who’s trying not to cry
Everything was coming my way, but I was going down. I was painfully empty.
So you can't dance? Not at all? Not even one step? How can you say that you've taken any trouble to live when you won't even dance?
I had real plans for my next decade and felt I'd worked hard enough to earn it. Will I really not live to see my children married? To watch the World Trade Center rise again? To read - if not indeed write - the obituaries of elderly villains like Henry Kissinger and Joseph Ratzinger?
All young people, regardless of sexual orientation or identity, deserve a safe and supportive environment in which to achieve their full potential.
We'll fill our lives with what we cultivate the most. Plant grace by the acre.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.