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.
They say I need to be seasoned; they say I need to be stewed. They say, 'We need to boil all the hope out of him -- like us -- and then he'll be ready.'
We fight not to enslave, but to set a country free, and to make room upon the earth for honest men to live in.
I don't fear death. I remember my last meeting with my father when he told me, "You know, tonight when I will be killed, my mother and my father will be waiting for me." It makes me weepy ... but I don't think it can happen unless God wants it to happen because so many people have tried to kill me.
Gay people - generally speaking - have a responsibility to our own community and to future generations of gay people to come out, if and when we feel that we can.
I'll fight, till from my bones my flesh be hacked.
Never give up. Never give in. Never become hostile... Hate is too big a burden to bear.
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