WIST

When in doubt, win the trick.

Edmond Hoyle (1672-1769) Writer, esp. of card game rules and play.
“Twenty-four Rules for Learners,” Rule 12

The Free Exercise Clause at the very least was designed to guarantee freedom of conscience by prohibiting any degree of compulsion in matters of belief. It was offended by a burden on one’s religion. The Establishment Clause can be understood as designed in part to ensure that the advancement of religion comes only from the voluntary efforts of its proponents and not from support by the state. Religious groups are to prosper or perish on the intrinsic merit and attraction of their beliefs and practices.

Harry Blackmun (1908-1999) US Supreme Court Associate Justice (1970-1994) [Harold Andrew Blackmun]
Speech, National Archives, Washington, DC (23 Jun 1987)

In a virtuous community men of sense and principle will always be placed at the head of affairs. In a declining state of public morals men will be so blinded to their true interests as to put the incapable and unworthy at the helm. It is therefore vain to complain of the follies or crimes of a government. We must lay the hands on our own hearts and say, Here is the sin that makes the public sin.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) American essayist and poet
“The Individual and the State,” sermon, Second Church of Boston (8 Apr 1830)

A nuclear war does not defend a country and it does not defend a system. I’ve put it the same way many times; not even the most accomplished ideologue will be able to tell the difference between the ashes of capitalism and the ashes of communism.

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006) Canadian-American economist, diplomat, author
“The Ashes of Capitalism and the Ashes of Communism,” interview (undated) with John M. Whiteley in Quest for Peace: an Introduction (1986)

With Selma and the voting rights bill one era of our struggle came to a close and a new era came into being. Now our struggle is for genuine equality, which means economic equality. For we know that it isn’t enough to integrate lunch counters. What does it profit a man to be able to eat at an integrated lunch counter if he doesn’t earn enough money to buy a hamburger and a coup of coffee?

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
Speech to Striking Sanitation Workers, Memphis, Tennessee (18 Mar 1968)

King appears to have used the phrase on a number of occasions (I found references to a Birmingham sit-in and to 1965), but the above is the one case, a few weeks before his death, that I was able to pin down.

Other (earlier) versions one finds quoted and paraphrased:

• "It does no good to be able to eat at a lunch counter if you can't afford to buy a hamburger."
• "It doesn't do much good when you can sit at a lunch couner but you can't afford to buy a hamburger."
• "What good does it do to be able to eat at a lunch counter if you can't buy a hamburger?"