Quotes About Leadership

Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle.

Perhaps…the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.

Martin Luther King Jr.

Democracy transformed from thin paper to thick action is the greatest form of government on earth.

And he's allowed me to go to the mountain. And I've looked over, and I've seen the promised land! I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land.

Martin Luther King Jr.

Ultimately, a genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.

our slogan must not be "Burn, baby, burn." It must be, "Build, baby, build." "Organize, baby, organize." Yes, our slogan must be "Learn, baby, learn," so that we can earn, baby, earn.

Martin Luther King Jr.

Even where the polls are open to all, Negroes have shown themselves too slow to exercise their voting privileges. There must be a concerted effort on the part of Negro leaders to arouse their people from their apathetic indifference to this obligation of citizenship. In the past, apathy was a moral failure. Today, it is a form of moral and political suicide.

most people, and Christians in particular, are thermometers that record or register the temperature of majority opinion, not thermostats that transform and regulate the temperature of society.

Everybody can be great because anybody can serve.

American political thought was not committed to conservatism, nor radicalism, nor moderation. It was above all fluid. As such it contained trends rather than hard lines, and affirmative leadership could guide it into constructive channels.

I will do everything in my power to make it so by outspoken agreement whenever proper, and determined opposition whenever necessary.

To attempt radical reform without adequate organization is like trying to sail a boat without a rudder.

TODAY I WANT TO TELL THE CITY OF SELMA, TODAY I WANT TO SAY TO THE STATE OF ALABAMA, TODAY I WANT TO SAY TO THE PEOPLE OF AMERICA AND THE NATIONS OF THE WORLD, THAT WE ARE NOT ABOUT TO TURN AROUND.

We have guided missiles and misguided men.

Perhaps the South, the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.

Indeed, by the end of a turbulent decade there was a new quality to Negro life. The Negro was no longer a subject of change; he was the active organ of change. He powered the drive. He set the pace.

We don't want to be integrated out of power; we want to be integrated into power.

He was impatient to be free.

Indeed, by the end of a turbulent decade there was a new quality to Negro life. The Negro was no longer a subject of change; he was the active organ of change. He powered the drive. He set the pace. At the same time it had become clear that though white opposition could be defeated it remained a formidable force capable of hardening its resistance when the cost of change was increased.

A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.

The saving of our world from pending doom will come, not through the complacent adjustment of the conforming majority, but through the creative maladjustment of a nonconforming minority.