Today in the US is Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Whether you choose to make it a day of reflection, a workday like any other or just a day off, take a few minutes to consider the man, his legacy, his wisdom and his sacrifice. He isn’t just a name and a footnote in history. He was a man with a family and dreams and hopes of his own. And if it hadn’t been for an assassin’s bullet, he might still be alive today. (He would have turned 84 last week.)
It boggles the mind that he was only 39 when he was killed.
Management lessons from the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. (Jan 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968):
Whatever your life’s work is, do it well. A man should do his job so well that the living, the dead, and the unborn could do it no better.
Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think.
Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.
A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.
The time is always right to do what is right.
All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.
The art of acceptance is the art of making someone who has just done you a small favor wish that he might have done you a greater one.
Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.
Almost always, the creative dedicated minority has made the world better.
Many people fear nothing more terribly than to take a position which stands out sharply and clearly from the prevailing opinion. The tendency of most is to adopt a view that is so ambiguous that it will include everything and so popular that it will include everybody. Not a few men who cherish lofty and noble ideals hide them under a bushel for fear of being called different.
The nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.
We must use time creatively.
A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on the installment plan.
Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.
If we are to go forward, we must go back and rediscover those precious values – that all reality hinges on moral foundations and that all reality has spiritual control.
Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’
The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character – that is the goal of true education.
Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.
Courage faces fear and thereby masters it.
Happy MLK day, everyone. 🙂 Oh, and this too:
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Brand Building and Online Marketing Blog 
Hey Olivier ~
Thanks for the good article today on MLK. I needed a boost, and his qoutes are doing it for me!
Amazing that he lived only to 39. Have you read Hampton Sides book Hellhound on His Trail, about the assisination and manhunt for James Earl Ray? Good stuff ~
Thanks again,
Pat Bailey, in frigid Minnesota
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MLK would have made a great C.E.O. without a doubt. He is the quintessential leader. I find the second quote most powerful. Everyone’s too lazy to innovate these days. Especially in this information age where individuals rely on Google to answer everything. Great post Olivier
What really stand out for me and hits home is this.
“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”
In my life I have been able to separate those who I need to worry about more than others when I bump into these situations.
It made me feel closer to MLK thinking he was only 6 years older than me when he left this world.
Thanks for sharing…
Brilliant curation of some of the very best thoughts of Martin Luther King! Thank you so much. I learned of you through Raul Colon from a Facebook post he did.
May you be part of the creative dedicated minority has made the world better Olivier.
Thanks for this great post.
All I’m saying is simply this: that all mankind is tied together; all life is interrelated, and we are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. For some strange reason I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. And you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be – this is the interrelated structure of reality. John Donne caught it years ago and placed it in graphic terms: No man is an Island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main… And then he goes on toward the end to say: any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. And by believing this, by living out this fact, we will be able to remain awake through a great revolution.
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