Martin Luther King Jr. Quotes

Not everyone can be famous, but everyone can be great. Because greatness is a matter of service.

Not my power, but the power of the position, a power which could be used to help.

The high destiny of the individual is to serve rather than to rule.

It is not the style of clothes one wears, neither the kind of automobile one drives, nor the amount of money one has in the bank, that counts. These mean nothing. It is simply service that measures success.

Jesus measured greatness in terms of service not status. God determines your greatness by how many people you serve, not how many people serve you.

The great leaders in history were great not because of what they owned or earned but because of what they gave their lives to accomplish. They made a difference!

Greatness comes through serving. The more you serve, the greater you become

One of the most amazing things ever said on this earth is Jesus's statement: "He that is greatest among you shall be your servant." Nobody has one chance in a billion of being thought really great after a century has passed except those who have been the servants of all. That strange realist from Bethlehem knew that.

If you want to be important-wonderful. If you want to be recognized-wonderful. If you want to be great-wonderful. But recognize that he who is greatest among you shall be your servant. That's a new definition of greatness.

The world's idea of greatness is to rule, but Christian greatness consists in serving.

One achieves true human dignity only when one serves. Only he is great who subjects himself to taking part in the achievement of a great task.

To command is to serve, nothing more and nothing less.

A great man is different from an eminent one in that he is ready to be the servant of the society.

Greatness lies, not in being strong, but in the right using of strength; and strength is not used rightly when it serves only to carry a man above his fellows for his own solitary glory. He is the greatest whose strength carries up the most hearts by the attraction of his own.

I keep saying I'm not at all famous in my own country, because people do not think I have done anything for India.

I think of Pope Gregory the Great. He wanted the cloister. He wanted to pray and study, and yet he was thrust into this administrative job, and he submitted to that. And in that submission, he became a great leader. You could say that the only person who is safe to lead is the person who is free to submit.

The best people to have power are the ones who don't want it.

I don't have to run the Peace Corps. I could live without seeing my picture in the newspapers and without being interviewed.

Use power to help people. For we are given power not to advance our own purposes nor to make a great show in the world, nor a name. There is but one just use of power and it is to serve people.

No man has come to true greatness who has not felt that his life belongs to his race, and that which God gives to him, He gives him for mankind.

If it awakens in us as a whole how important that is - the theme of how conquest and ambition are meaningless without contribution - I think then as a society we're in better shape. I hope people are inspired to be the best.

A great man is made up of qualities that meet or make great occasions.

Your position never gives you the right to command. It only imposes on you the duty of so living your life that others can receive your orders without being humiliated.

No one who has come to true greatness has not felt in some degree that his life belongs to the people, and what God has given them he gives it for mankind.

Service is a deceptively profound way to prove not only what you can do for the world, but what you can tell the world to expect from you and your ambitions.