You can have no influence over those for whom you have underlying contempt.
Interpretation
Respect and positive feelings are essential for influence over others.
This quote by Martin Luther King, Jr. emphasizes that genuine influence and the ability to lead or guide others depend on a foundation of respect and goodwill. If you harbor contempt or disdain for others, your ability to inspire, persuade, or make a positive impact on their lives is severely diminished, as contempt breeds division and resistance.
In practice
In a team meeting where respect is lacking among members, one can reference this quote to encourage a more positive atmosphere.
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.
A relationship is more of an assignment than a choice. We can walk away from the assignment, but we cannot walk away from the lessons it presents. We stay with a relationship until a lesson is learned, or we simply learn it another way.
Our relationship wasn't the sun, the moon, the stars, but it wasn't bullshit, either.
I sincerely hope I can contribute to the progress there has been in relations between Jews and Catholics since the Second Vatican Council in a spirit of renewed collaboration.
When I play with my cat, who knows whether she is not amusing herself with me more than I with her.
If women were particular about men's characters, they would never get married at all.
Old people, who have felt blows and toil and known the world's hard hand, need, even more than children do, a woman's tenderness.
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