Faith is taking the first step even when you can't see the whole staircase.

Often attributed to Martin Luther King Jr., this aphorism frames faith as courageous action under conditions of uncertainty: one moves forward without possessing a complete map of outcomes. Its staircase metaphor suggests progress as incremental and embodied—each step reveals the next, rather than offering total visibility from the start. The line has been widely used in sermons, motivational writing, and leadership contexts to encourage perseverance when evidence is incomplete. However, because the attribution is doubtful, its significance today may lie more in its popular afterlife—how King’s moral authority is invoked to lend weight to a general spiritual principle—than in its demonstrable place within his documented thought.