Martin Luther King, Jr. Quotes
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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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You see, my friends...you begin to ask the questions, 'Who owns the oil?' You begin to ask the question, 'Who owns the iron ore?' You begin to ask the question, 'Why is it that people have to pay water bills in a world that is two-thirds water?'
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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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The intellectual and moral satisfaction that I failed to gain from the utilitarianism of Bentham and Mill, the revolutionary methods of Marx and Lenin, the social contract theory of Hobbes, the "back to nature" optimism of Rousseau, and the superman philosophy of Nietzsche, I found in the nonviolent resistance philosophy of Gandhi. I came to feel that this was the only morally and practically sound method open to oppressed people in their struggle for freedom.
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We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now.
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O America, how you've taken necessities from the masses to give luxuries to the classes.
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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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Like a boil that must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed to the light of human conscience before it can be cured.
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The church must be reminded that it is not the master, or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state.
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The strong man is the man who can stand up for his rights and not hit back.
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The moral arc of the universe bends at the elbow of justice.
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Our eternal message of hope is that dawn will come.
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To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law.
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If physical death is the price that I must pay to free my white brothers and sisters from a permanent death of the spirit, then nothing can be more redemptive.
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We must see the great distinction between a reform movement and a revolutionary movement. We are called upon to raise certain basic questions about the whole society . . . . What America must be told today is that she must be born again. The whole structure of American life must be changed.
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I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed, without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today – my own government.
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There is something in this universe that justifies the biblical writer in saying, "You shall reap what you sow." This is a law-abiding universe. This is a moral universe. It hinges on moral foundations. If we are to make of this a better world, we've got to go back and rediscover that precious value that we've left behind.
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Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
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Truth crushed to earth will rise again.
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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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We are not makers of history. We are made by history.
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By...our readiness to allow arms to be purchased at will and fired at whim; by allowing our movie and television screens to teach our children that the hero is one who masters the art of shooting and the technique of killing...we have created an atmosphere in which violence and hatred have become popular pastimes.
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Don't ever let anyone pull you so low as to hate them. We must use the weapon of love. We must have the compassion and understanding for those who hate us. We must realize so many people are taught to hate us that they are not totally responsible for their hate. But we stand in life at midnight; we are always on the threshold of a new dawn.
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Courage faces fear and thereby masters it.