You may be 38 years old, as I happen to be. And one day, some great opportunity stands before you and calls you to stand up for some great principle, some great issue, some great cause. And you refuse to do it because you are afraid...You refuse to do it because you want to live longer...You're afraid that you will lose your job, or you are afraid you will be criticized, or that you will lose your popularity, and you're afraid someone will stab you, or shoot at you, or bomb your house; so you refuse to take the stand. Well, you may go on and live until you are 90, but you are just as dead at 38 as you would be at 90. And the cessation of breathing in your life is but the belated announcement of an earlier death of the spirit.
--- Dr. Martin Luther King, Sermon "But If Not," November 5, 1967
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