On some positions, cowardice asks the question, is it expedient? And then expedience comes along and asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? Conscience asks the question, is it right? There comes a time when one must take the position that is neither safe nor politic nor popular, but he must do it because conscience tells him it is right.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of following one's conscience over social or personal conveniences.
In this quote, Martin Luther King, Jr. highlights the conflict between cowardice, expedience, vanity, and conscience. He warns that while it may be tempting to choose a path that is safer, more acceptable, or more popular, true morality often requires us to act in accordance with our conscience, even when it is difficult or goes against popular opinion. It is a call to courage in standing up for what is right, regardless of the personal cost.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about ethical leadership.
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.
Not Exactly True That skin hate is dead. There will never be color blindness in a culture of fear. But when you live afraid of your neighbor, the monster you should most walk in terror of thrives. It starts as a little thing, small enough to burrow into your pores, take up excruciating residence in the dark recesses of your brain. Its name is paranoia, and it spreads like an oil spill, there in the shadows, chokes your humanity. Threatens your soul.
There's something wrong in a nation where six million black men are not allowed to vote because they were convicted of felonies. They've paid their dues to society, but yet their right to vote is not reinstated.
Every human being on this planet has their pain and their heartache and it's up to all of us to find our way back to the light.
We shall liberate our country.
I call upon you to draw from the depths of your being - to prove that we are a human race, to prove that our love outweighs our need to hate, that our compassion is more compelling than our need to blame.
When a person is going through hell, and she encounters someone who went through hellish hell and survived, then she can say, 'Mine is not so bad as all that. She came through, and so can I.'
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