Cowardice asks the question, is it safe? Expediency asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? But conscience asks the question, is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because it is right.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of acting on one's conscience rather than seeking safety, popularity, or political gain.
In this quote, Martin Luther King, Jr. underscores the struggle between choosing a path that is safe, politically advantageous, or popular, versus the moral imperative to do what is right. He advocates for taking a stand based on conscience, even when it is uncomfortable or unpopular, highlighting the necessity of courage in the pursuit of justice and moral integrity.
In practice
Using this quote in a speech about social justice to inspire action for what is morally right.
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.
I headed towards the mountain, which was an almost irresistible beacon to my storm self. It glowed with heat, pressure, and turbulence—everything a little dust devil like me could want.
Don't ask the world to stop moving because you have doubts.
If I had not felt certain that every additional trial was ordered by infinite love and mercy, I could not have survived my accumulated suffering.
In the terrible years of the Yezhov terror I spent seventeen months waiting in line outside the prison in Leningrad. One day somebody in the crowd identified me . . . and asked me in a whisper . . . "Can you describe this?" And I said: "I can."
I hate cowardice; I will have nothing to do with cowards or political nonsense.
This is not a contest between persons. The humblest citizen in all the land, when clad in the armor of a righteous cause, is stronger than all the hosts of error. I come to you in defense of a cause as holy as the cause of liberty - the cause of humanity.
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