Martin Luther King, Jr. Quotes
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I would suffer all the humiliation, all the torture, the absolute ostracism and even death, to prevent violence.
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One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that ' an unjust law is no law at all.
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A time comes when silence is betrayal.
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Seeing is not always believing.
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Mass civil disobedience can use rage as a constructive and creative force.
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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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Let's build bridges, not walls.
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Free at last, Free at last, Thank God almighty we are free at last.
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[E]very human life is a reflection of divinity, and... every act of injustice mars and defaces the image of God in man.
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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.
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As my sufferings mounted I soon realized that there were two ways in which I could respond to my situation -- either to react with bitterness or seek to transform the suffering into a creative force. I decided to follow the latter course.
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Whatever effects one directly, effects all indirectly.
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We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy.
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We were not unmindful of the difficulties involved. So we decided to go through a process of self-purification.
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... the right to defend one's home and one's person when attacked has been guaranteed through the ages by common law.
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The potential beauty of human life is constantly made ugly by man's ever-recurring song of retaliation.
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I am indebted to my wife Coretta, without whose love, sacrifices, and loyalty neither life nor work would bring fulfillment. She has given me words of consolation when I needed them and a well-ordered home where Christian love is a reality.
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We aren't engaged in any negative protest and in any negative arguments with anybody. We are saying that we are determined to be men. We are determined to be people. We are saying that we are God's children. And that we don't have to live like we are forced to live.
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Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter. I won't have any money to leave behind. I won't have the fine and luxurious things of life to leave behind. But I just want to leave a committed life behind. And that's all I want to say.
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The movement for equality and justice can only be a success if it has both a mass and militant character; the barriers to be overcome require both.
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We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for the victims of our nation and for those it calls enemy, for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers and sisters.
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Perhaps the worst sin in life is knowing right and not doing it.
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One of these days I'm going to put my body where my mind is.
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Moral principles have lost their distinctiveness. For modern man, absolute right and absolute wrong are a matter of what the majority is doing.