Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a leader who, like Mahatma Gandhi before him, and Nelson Mandela after him, showed us the way from weakness and division to strength in unity.
He challenged and inspired us to reach deeper within ourselves, despite ourselves, for our best, which sometimes is, simply, better than yesterday. His power endures because it's rooted in the courage to hold hope and faith in each other's potential: "knowing" we can do it ... we can be better every day, each in our own way.
On this, the U.S. holiday celebrating his life and legacy, I present you with ten of his extraordinary thoughts on leadership:
- "A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of
consensus."
- "I am not interested in power for power's sake, but I'm interested in power that is moral, that is right and that is good."
- "All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality."
- "Life's most persistent and urgent question is, 'What are you doing for others?'"
- "The time is always right to do the right thing."
- "We must use time creatively."
- "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."
- "The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically."
- "Never succumb to the temptation of bitterness."
- "The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy"
