Martin Luther King, Jr. Quotes
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Resistance and nonviolence are not in themselves good. There is another element that must be present in our struggle that then makes our resistance and nonviolence truly meaningful. That element is reconciliation. Our ultimate end must be the creation of the beloved community
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In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline.
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If we do an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, we will be a blind and toothless nation.
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Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism... 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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The question is no longer between violence and non-violence it is between non-violence and non-existence.
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Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.
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If the Negro is to achieve the goal of integration, he must organize himself into a militant and nonviolent mass movement.
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Every person must stand up and be accountable, but be responsible for their actions.
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They asked if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today-my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent.
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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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Curtailment of free speech is rationalized on grounds that a more compelling American tradition forbids criticism of the government when the nation is at war... Nothing can be more destructive of our fundamental democratic traditions than the vicious effort to silence dissenters.
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Science investigates; religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge which is power; religion gives man wisdom which is control.
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I never cease to wonder at the amazing presumption of much of white society, assuming that they have the right to bargain with the Negro for his freedom.
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He who is greatest among you shall be a servant. That's the new definition of greatness. ... By giving that definition of greatness, it means that everybody can be great, because everybody can serve.
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The road to freedom is a difficult, hard road. It always makes for temporary setbacks.
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We cannot be truly Christian people so long as we flaunt the central teachings of Jesus: brotherly love and the Golden Rule.
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I still believe that standing up for the truth of God is the greatest thing in the world. This is the end (purpose) of life. The end of life is not to be happy. The end of life is not to achieve pleasure and avoid pain. The end of life is to do the will of God, come what may.
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The self cannot be self without other selves.
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Education without social action is a one-sided value because it has no true power potential.
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If humanity is to progress, Gandhi is inescapable.
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We must be concerned not merely about who murdered them, but about the system, the way of life, the philosophy which produced the murderers .
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What I'm saying to you this morning is that 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.
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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 bombs in Vietnam explode at home; they destroy the hopes and possibilities for a decent America.