Martin Luther King, Jr. Quotes
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Violence is anything that denies human integrity, and leads to hopelessness and helplessness.
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Something should remind us once more that the great things in this universe are things that we never see.
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I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit together at the table of brotherhood.
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When the Negro finds the courage to be free, he faces dogs and guns and clubs and fire hoses totally unafraid, and the white men with those dogs, guns, clubs and fire hoses see that the Negro they have traditionally called "boy" has become a man.
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It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence in this world; it's nonviolence or nonexistence. That is where we are today.
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We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people.
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America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked 'insufficient funds.'
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I'll tell you, I've seen the lightning flash. I've heard the thunder roll. I felt sin-breakers dashing, trying to conquer my soul. But I heard the voice of Jesus saying still to fight on.
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Never succumb to the temptation of bitterness.
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Nonviolence is an imperative in order to bring about ultimate community.
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The Negro has no room to make any substantial compromises because his store of advantages is too small. He must press unrelentingly for quality, integrated education or his whole drive for freedom will be undermined by the absence of a most vital and indispensable element - learning.
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The self cannot be self without other selves.
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Many people in Harlem never go out of Harlem. I mean they'd never even been downtown. And you can see how this bitterness can accumulate. Here you see people crowded and hovered up in ghettos and slums with no hope.They see no way out.
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Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral. It is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all.
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Many of the ugly pages of American history have been obscured and forgotten....America owes a debt of justice which it has only begun to pay. If it loses the will to finish or slackens in its determination, history will recall its crimes and the country that would be great will lack the most indispensable element of greatness-justice.
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Had it not been for the ministry of my good friend Dr. Billy Graham, my work in the civil rights movement would not have been as successful as it has been.
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Violence is not only impractical but immoral.
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Time has been used destructively by people of ill will much more than it has been used constructively by those of good will.
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Seeing is not always believing.
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Ultimately a great nation is a compassionate nation.
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Cowardice asks the question, is it safe?
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We are all tied together in a single garment of destiny . . . I can never be what I ought to be until you are allowed to be what you ought to be.
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Let the Negro march. Let him make pilgrimages to city hall. Let him go on freedom rides. And above all, make an effort to understand why he must do this. For if his frustration and despair are allowed to continue piling up, millions of Negroes will seek solace and security in black-nationalist ideologies. And this, inevitably, would lead to a frightening racial nightmare.
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So 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!