Martin Luther King, Jr. Quotes
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Jesus is not an impractical idealist; he is the practical realist.
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The darkness of racial injustice will be dispelled only by the light of forgiving love. For more that three centuries American Negroes have been frustrated by day and bewilderment by night by unbearable injustice, and burdened with the ugly weight of discrimination. Forced to live with these shameful conditions, we are tempted to become bitter and retaliate with a corresponding hate. But if this happens, the new order we seek will be little more than a duplicate of the old order. We must in strength and humility meet hate with love.
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The time is always right to do what is right.
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We who in engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive.
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Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon. Indeed, it is a weapon unique in history, which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it.
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What good does it do to sit at the counter when you cannot afford a hamburger?
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This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love.
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They were too God-intoxicated to be "astronomically intimidated." They brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contest.
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The evils of capitalism are as real as the evils of militarism and evils of racism.
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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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Courage is the power of the mind to overcome fear.
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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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[I]t must be emphasized that nonviolent resistance is not a method for cowards; it does resist. If one uses this method because he is afraid or merely because he lacks the instruments of violence, he is not truly nonviolent. This is why Gandhi often said that if cowardice is the only alternative to violence, it is better to fight.
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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.
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It does not matter how long you live, but how well you do it.
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Non-violent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and establish such creative tension that a community that has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored... I am not afraid of the word tension. I have earnestly worked and preached against violent tension, and there is a type of constructive tension that is necessary for growth.
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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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Let no man pull you so low as to hate him.
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You can't talk about solving the economic problem of the Negro without talking about billions of dollars. You can't talk about ending the slums without first saying profit must be taken out of the slums. You're really tampering and getting on dangerous ground because you are messing with folk then. You are messing with captains of industry. Now this means that we are treading in difficult water, because it really means that we are saying that something is wrong with capitalism.
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Mass civil disobedience can use rage as a constructive and creative force.
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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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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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I would suffer all the humiliation, all the torture, the absolute ostracism and even death, to prevent violence.
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Those who love peace must learn to organize as effectively as those who love war.