Martin Luther King, Jr. Quotes
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Where evil men would seek to perpetuate an unjust status quo, good men must seek to bring into being a real order of justice.
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To dislocate the functioning of a city without destroying it can be more effective than a riot because it can be longer-lasting, costly to the society but not wantonly destructive, moreover, it is more difficult for Government to quell it by superior force.
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One day the South will know that when these disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters, they were in reality standing up for what is best in the American dream and for the most sacred values in our Judaeo-Christian heritage, thereby bringing our nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in their formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.
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Oh, the worst of all tragedies is not to die young, but to live until I am seventy five and yet not ever truly to have lived.
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I feel that when a white child goes to school only with white children, unconsciously that child grows up in many instances devoid of a world perspective. There is an unconscious provincialism, and it can develop into an unconscious superiority complex just as a Negro develops an unconscious inferiority complex.
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Whatever effects one directly, effects all indirectly.
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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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I don't think you can be in public life without being called bad names.
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I want to be the white man's brother, not his brother-in-law.
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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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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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Whatever your life's work is, do it well. A man should do his job so well that the living, the dead, and the unborn could do it no better.
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Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself.
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Don't let anybody make you think that God chose America as his divine, messianic force to be a sort of policeman of the whole world.
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The bombs in Vietnam explode at home; they destroy the hopes and possibilities for a decent America.
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People with good intentions but limited understanding are more dangerous than people with total ill will.
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If we are to have peace on earth, our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Our loyalties must transcend our race, our tribe, our class, and our nation; and this means we must develop a world perspective.
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Mass civil disobedience can use rage as a constructive and creative force.
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There may have been a time when war served as a negative good by preventing the spread and growth of an evil force, but the destructive power of modern weapons eliminates even the possibility that war may serve as a negative good.
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Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men. Our hope for creative living lies in our ability to reestablish the spiritual needs of our lives in personal character and social justice. Without this spiritual and moral reawakening we shall destroy ourselves in the misuse of our own instruments.
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The self cannot be self without other selves.
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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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What you get with violence can be maintained only with violence.
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The time is always right to do what is right.