Martin Luther King, Jr. Quotes
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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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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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Mass civil disobedience can use rage as a constructive and creative force.
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And you know, it's possible that the priest and the Levite looked over that man on the ground and wondered if the robbers were still around. Or it's possible that they felt that the man on the ground was merely faking. And he was acting like he had been robbed and hurt, in order to seize them over there, lure them there for quick and easy seizure. And so the first question that the Levite asked was, "If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?" But then the Good Samaritan came by. And he reversed the question: "If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?
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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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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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It is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society. These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they have no other alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention. And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard.
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Our eternal message of hope is that dawn will come.
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We know of no more crucial civil rights issue facing Congress today than the need to increase the federal minimum wage and extend its coverage.
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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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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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The curse of poverty has no justification in our age. It is socially as cruel and blind as the practice of cannibalism at the dawn of civilization, when men ate each other because they had not yet learned to take food from the soil or to consume the abundant animal life around them. The time has come for us to civilize ourselves by the total, direct and immediate abolition of poverty.
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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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Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
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We must have our freedom now. We must have the right to vote. We must have equal protection of the law.
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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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The bombs in Vietnam explode at home; they destroy the hopes and possibilities for a decent America.
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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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Most of these people will never make the headlines and their names will not appear in Who's Who. Yet when years have rolled past and when the blazing light of truth is focused on this marvelous age in which we live - men and women will know and children will be taught that we have a finer land, a better people, a more noble civilization - because these humble children of God were willing to suffer for righteousness' sake.
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The moral arc of the universe bends at the elbow of justice.
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The whole world must see that Israel must exist and has the right to exist, and is one of the great outposts of democracy in the world.
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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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The labor movement was the principal force that transformed misery and despair into hope and progress. Out of its bold struggles, economic and social reform gave birth to unemployment insurance, old age pensions, government relief for the destitute, and, above all, new wage levels that meant not mere survival but a tolerable life.
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The poor in our countries have been shut out of our minds and driven from the mainstream of our societies, because we have allowed them to become invisible.