Influence is like a savings account. The less you use it, the more you've got.

Wishing of all strategies, is the worst.

If you're a preacher, you talk for a living, so even if you don't make sense, you learn to make nonsense eloquently.

To find people who don't want anything is rare.

I tried. But not everybody thought so.

Tomorrow is the day when idlers work, and fool reform, and mortal men lay hold on heaven.

My hope for my children must be that they respond to the still, small voice of God in their own hearts.

We rise in glory as we sink in pride.

President Jimmy Carter was a citizen soldier. Ironically, he was considered weak because he didn't kill anybody and he didn't get anyone killed.

I have committed my life to helping the poor, and I believe that if more companies followed Wal-Mart's lead in providing opportunity and savings to those who need it most, more Americans battling poverty would realize the American dream.

The commercialization of sport is the democratization of sport.

Nothing is illegal if one hundred businessmen decide to do it.

Influence is like a savings account. The less you use it, the more you've got.

Civil rights leaders are involved in helping poor people. That's what I've been doing all my life.

It is a blessing to die for a cause, because you can so easily die for nothing.

No one who's white thinks he's innocent. No one who's black thinks he's guilty.

In a world where change is inevitable and continuous, the need to achieve that change without violence is essential for survival.

I have about concluded that wealth is a state of mind, and that anyone can acquire a wealthy state of mind by thinking rich thoughts.

Once the Xerox copier was invented, diplomacy died.

On the soft bed of luxury many kingdoms have expired.

Look at those they call unfortunate and at a closer view, you'll find many of them are unwise.

Moral power is probably best when it is not used. The less you use it the more you have.

Affirmative action is an effort to include every aspect of society in the decision making.

Egypt's problem is that you've got an economy that works for about 40 million people, only you have 90 million people. The answer to the Egyptian problem is not guns, but jobs. We've got to find a private-sector, nongovernmental, aggressive way of creating jobs. That's not America's role totally.

Everybody in America has been dependent on the government at some time. We owe everybody in America the right to vote and access to capital. What I say is, let's make America work, let's make democracy and free enterprise work for everybody.

Everything that has happened in my life is because of good government and because the United States of America was the greatest nation on the face of the earth.

Freedom is a struggle, and we do it together. Not only together as black citizens, but black and white together.

Having personally watched the Voting Rights Act being signed into law that August day, I can't begin to imagine how we could have all been so wrong in believing that more Americans would vote once they were all truly free to do so.

I believe in humanitarian capitalism, and there are good people on Wall Street.

I like my life. I've had a good life. I think the reason is my parents taught me that life is a burden. But if you take it one day at a time, it's an easy burden.

I was raised that way: don't get mad, get smart.

I'm against voter fraud in any form, and I have long supported a national voter ID card. But ID cards need not - and must not - restrict voting rights in any way, shape or form.

I've always seen the Olympics as a place where you could act out your differences on the athletic field with a sense of sportsmanship and fairness and mutual respect.

I've been dyslexic and had Attention Deficit Disorder at some time in my life. I still read with a highlighter, but I've always loved to read.

If Congress can move President's Day, Columbus Day and, alas, Martin Luther King's Birthday celebration for the convenience of shoppers, shouldn't they at least consider moving Election Day for the convenience of voters?

If I wanted to develop a scenario to destroy America, I would do what the Republicans are doing. Take the brightest and best young black men off the streets, put them in jail, make them meaner than hell for 8 or 10 years and then turn them lose in a society where there are plenty of guns for them to play with.

In a sane, civil, intelligent and moral society, you don't blame poor people for being poor.

It stands to reason that unloved and unwanted children are going to get into crime.

Most of my teachers wanted to send me to the principal's office. But my fourth-grade teacher once put her arms around me and said, 'You sure write well.' And I've had good penmanship until this day. She was the only one who ever said anything nice to me. That's the kind of motivation that students need.

Nobody black had learned anything from the 'Letter from the Birmingham Jail' or from the 'I Have a Dream' speech. That was a revelation of white people.

One of the principles of nonviolence is that you leave your opponents whole and better off than you found them.

Profits should be for a purpose. Profits should be productive. You should make money for producing benefits that make the world a better place. Making money is a good thing when it is made in service to humanity or the democracy.

Slavery didn't break up the black families as much as liberal welfare rules.

Some kind of affirmative action is important in a democracy and for economic competitiveness and national security. The Army was the first to realize that you had to have desegregation of a military to have it working properly.

Surely, if we can land a spaceship on Mars, we can certainly put a voter ID card in the hand of every eligible voter.

The two are not mutually exclusive, but we think we can have wealth without good ideas and without values and without a clear vision. Wealth without vision is insanity.

The unsung heroes of the civil rights movement were always the wives and the mothers.

There can be no democracy without truth. There can be no truth without controversy, there can be no change without freedom. Without freedom there can be no progress.

There's no problem on the planet that can't be solved without violence. That's the lesson of the civil rights movement.