Martin Luther King, Jr. Quotes
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Truth is found neither in Marxism nor in traditional capitalism. Each represents a partial truth. Historically capitalism failed to see the truth in collective enterprise, and Marxism failed to see the truth in individual enterprise. Nineteenth century capitalism failed to see that life is social and Marxism failed and still fails to see that life is individual and personal. The Kingdom of God is neither the thesis of individual enterprise nor the antithesis of collective enterprise, but a synthesis which reconciles the truths of both.
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A good many observers have remarked that if equality could come at once, the Negro would not be ready for it. I submit that the white American is even more unprepared.
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The past is prophetic in that it asserts loudly that wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.
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Free at last, Free at last, Thank God almighty we are free at last.
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Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for a new world. This is the calling of the sons of God, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response. Shall we say the odds are too great? Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard?
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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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Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle.
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Ten thousand fools proclaim themselves into obscurity, while one wise man forgets himself into immortality.
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Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups are more immoral than individuals.
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The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character - that is the goal of true education.
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I am convinced that...in the struggle for righteousness man has cosmic companionship.
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We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.
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If it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets as Raphael painted pictures, sweep streets as Michelangelo carved marble, sweep streets as Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry.
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I never intend to adjust myself to the madness of militarism.
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Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon. Indeed, it is a weapon unique in history, which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it.
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Call it democracy, or call it democratic socialism, but there must be a better distribution of wealth within this country for all God's children.
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Babies, we are told, are the latest news from heaven.
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I have a dream that one day little black boys and girls will be holding hands with little white boys and girls.
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Everything that we see is a shadow cast by that which we do not see.
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True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.
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Some things are right, whether nobody sees you doing them or not.
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Nonviolence is an imperative in order to bring about ultimate community.
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Nothing pains some people more than having to think.
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In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men - yes, black men as well as white men - would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness... America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked 'insufficient funds.'