40 years have passed since Martin Luther King was shot on the balcony of the Lorraine hotel in Memphis Tennessee. And yet, today, April 4 2008, the words of the slain civil rights leader remain as poignant and applicable as ever.

It is impossible to pick a top 10 list of King’s best quotes, because he delivered hundreds of speeches, thousands of words of brilliance, compassion and love.

Here are 10 quotes which are a sample of the countless amazing quotes of Dr. King. The first excerpt comes from a speech delivered at a sanitation strike in Memphis. He refers to his own probably assassination. Fearless and passionate, King urges us to carry on his struggle towards “the promised land” peace and justice and equality without him.

1. And then I got into Memphis. And some began to say that threats, or talk about the threats that were out. What would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers? Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter with me now. Because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people will get to the promised land. And I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.
2. Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.
3. In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.
4. I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. That is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant
5. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.
6. It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me, and I think that’s pretty important.
7. Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man’s sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true
8. Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor in America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours.
9. Being a Negro in America means trying to smile when you want to cry. It means trying to hold on to physical life amid psychological death. It means the pain of watching your children grow up with clouds of inferiority in their mental skies. It means having your legs cut off, and then being condemned for being a cripple. It means seeing your mother and father spiritually murdered by the slings and arrows of daily exploitation, and then being hated for being an orphan.
10. Man was born into barbarism when killing his fellow man was a normal condition of existence. He became endowed with a conscience. And he has now reached the day when violence toward another human being must become as abhorrent as eating another’s flesh.

! Learn more about Martin Luther King by visiting The King Center, which was founded by the late Coretta Scott King, the widow of Martin Luther King.