Martin Luther King, Jr. Quotes
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We all have the drum major instinct. We all want to be important, to surpass others, to achieve distinction, to lead the parade.
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By nonviolent resistance, the Negro can also enlist all men of good will in his struggle for equality.
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You can’t reach good ends through evil means, because the means represent the seed and the end represents the tree.
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Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into friend.
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It is our experience that the nation doesn't move around questions of genuine equality for the poor and for black people until it is confronted massively, dramatically in terms of direct action.
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Everything that we see is a shadow cast by that which we do not see.
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But life at its best is a creative synthesis of opposites in fruitful harmony.
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The unemployed, poverty-stricken white man must be made to realize that he is in the very same boat with the Negro. Together, they could exert massive pressure on the government to get jobs for all. Together, they could form a grand alliance. Together, they could merge all people for the good of all.
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The time has come for an all-out war against poverty. The rich nations must use their vast resources of wealth to develop the underdeveloped, school the unschooled, and feed the unfed. Ultimately a great nation is a compassionate nation. No individual or nation can be great if it does not have a concern for "the least of these".
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For more than two centuries our foreparents labored here without wages; they made cotton king; and they built the homes of their masters in the midst of brutal injustice and shameful humiliation - and yet out of a bottomless vitality our people continue to thrive and develop.
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We must have the faith that things will work out somehow, that God will make a way for us when there seems no way.
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Like anybody, I would like to have a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will.
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Being a Negro in America means trying to smile when you want to cry. It means trying to hold on to physical life amid psychological death. It means the pain of watching your children grow up with clouds of inferiority in their mental skies. It means having their legs off, and then being condemned for being a cripple.
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Jesus reminds us that the good life combines the toughness of the serpent and the tenderness of the dove. To have serpent-like qualities devoid of dovelike qualities is to be passionless, mean, and selfish. To have dovelike without serpent-like qualities is to be sentimental, anemic and aimless. We must combine strongly marked antitheses.
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Communism forgets that life is individual. Capitalism forgets that life is social, and the kingdom of brotherhood is found neither in the thesis of communism nor the antithesis of capitalism but in a higher synthesis. It is found in a higher synthesis that combines the truths of both.
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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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The way of acquiescence leads to moral and spiritual suicide. The way of violence leads to bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers. But, the way of nonviolence leads to redemption and the creation of the beloved community.
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We refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt.
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Injustice anywhere threatens justice everywhere.
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In the current struggle, there is one positive course of action. There is no alternative, for the alternative would connote a rear march.
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Music is the best consolation for a despaired man.
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My place is in the sunlight of opportunity.
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Babies, we are told, are the latest news from heaven.
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One of the great tragedies of life is that men seldom bridge the gulf between practice and profession, between doing and saying.