Martin Luther King, Jr. Quotes
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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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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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It is my hope that as the Negro plunges deeper into the quest for freedom and justice he will plunge even deeper into the philosophy of non-violence. The Negro all over the South must come to the point that he can say to his white brother: "We will match your capacity to inflict suffering with our capacity to endure suffering. We will meet your physical force with soul force. We will not hate you, but we will not obey your evil laws. We will soon wear you down by pure capacity to suffer".
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We cannot walk alone.
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Not everybody can be famous but everybody can be great, because greatness is determined by service.
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[Nonviolence] is directed against forces of evil rather than against persons who happen to be doing the evil. It is evil that the nonviolent resister seeks to defeat, not the persons victimized by evil.
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Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
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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 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 conservatives who say, "Let us not move so fast," and the extremists who say, "Let us go out and whip the world ," would tell you that they are as far apart as the poles. But there is a striking parallel: They accomplish nothing; for they do not reach the people who have a crying need to be free.
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I think the first reason that we should love our enemies, and I think this was at the very center of Jesus' thinking, is this: that hate for hate only intensifies the existence of hate and evil in the universe.
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Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God’s children.
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To accept injustice or segregation passively is to say to the oppressor that his actions are morally right.
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We cannot walk alone. And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back.
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Every person must stand up and be accountable, but be responsible for their actions.
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As long as the mind is enslaved, the body can never be free. Psychological freedom, a firm sense of self-esteem, is the most powerful weapon against the long night of physical slavery.
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Quietly endure, silently suffer and patiently wait.
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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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Why should there be hunger and deprivation in any land, in any city, at any table, when man has the resources and the scientific know-how to provide all mankind with the basic necessities of life? There is no deficit in human resources. The deficit is in human will.
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And I say to you, I have decided to stick with love, for I know that love is ultimately the only answer to mankind's problems. And I'm going to talk about it everywhere I go. For I have seen too much hate... every time I see it, I know that it does something to their faces and their personalities, and I say to myself that hate is too great a burden to bear. I have decided to love.
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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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Jesus is not an impractical idealist; he is the practical realist.
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Before you finish eating breakfast in the morning, you've depended on more than half of the world.
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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.