A Quote by Martin Luther King, Jr.

Ten thousand fools proclaim themselves into obscurity, while one wise man forgets himself into immortality.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Quote Topics

Fools Forgets Himself Immortality Man Obscurity Proclaim Ten Themselves Thousand While Wise Wise Man

Quote Author

Martin Luther King, Jr.
American - Leader
January 15, 1929 - April 4, 1968

The mass of men worry themselves into nameless graves while here and there a great unselfish soul forgets himself into immortality.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

We find that at present the human race is divided politically into one wise man, nine knaves, and ninety fools out of every hundred. That is, by an optimistic observer. The nine knaves assemble themselves under the banner of the most knavish among them, and become politicians; the wise man stands out, because he knows himself to be hopelessly out-numbered, and devotes himself to poetry, mathematics or philosophy; while the ninety fools plod off behind the banners of the nine villains, according to fancy, into the labyrinths of chicanery, malice and warfare.

T. H. White

Many a man who has known himself at ten forgets himself utterly between ten and thirty.

Catherine Drinker Bowen

A wise quote can only change a wise man! Therefore, wise sayings are for the wise men, not for the fools! The sunflowers turn their face toward the Sun, the fools, toward the darkness!

Mehmet Murat Ildan

Cato used to assert that wise men profited more by fools than fools by wise men; for that wise men avoided the faults of fools, but that fools would not imitate the good examples of wise men.

Plutarch

Fools call wise men fools. A wise man never calls any man a fool.

Thomas A. Edison

Wise men profit more from fools than fools from wise men; for the wise men shun the mistakes of fools, but fools do not imitate the successes of the wise.

Cato the Elder

A man who finds himself among others is irritated because he does not know why he is not one of the others. In bed next to a girl he loves, he forgets that he does not know why he is himself instead of the body he touches. Without knowing it, he suffers from the mental darkness that keeps him from screaming that he himself is the girl who forgets his presence while shuddering in his arms.

Georges Bataille

How were friendship possible? In mutual devotedness to the good and true; otherwise impossible, except as armed neutrality or hollow commercial league. A man, be the heavens ever praised, is sufficient for himself; yet were ten men, united in love, capable of being and of doing what ten thousand singly would fail in. Infinite is the help man can yield to man.

Thomas Carlyle

Only madmen and fools are pleased with themselves; no wise man is good enough for his own satisfaction.

Benjamin Whichcote

A man will work and slave in obscurity for ten years and then become famous in ten minutes.

Robert Ripley

To sum up: I am the man who when the concern pressed him and his way was straitened and he could find no other device by which to teach a demonstrable truth other than by giving satisfaction to a single virtuous man while displeasing ten thousand ignoramuses - I am he who prefers to address that single man by himself, and I do not heed the blame of those many creatures.

Maimonides

While fame impedes and constricts, obscurity wraps about a man like a mist; obscurity is dark, ample, and free; obscurity lets the mind take its way unimpeded. Over the obscure man is poured the merciful suffusion of darkness. None knows where he goes or comes. He may seek the truth and speak it; he alone is free; he alone is truthful, he alone is at peace.

Virginia Woolf

Man reckons with immortality, and forgets to reckon with death.

Milan Kundera

Alexander the Great once said that 'I would rather live a short life of glory than a long one of obscurity!' What a great illusion is this! Wise man is he who always chooses to live longer and he who blesses the obscurity!

Mehmet Murat Ildan

He who lives only unto himself withers and dies, while he who forgets himself in the service of others grows and blossoms.