Martin Luther King, Jr. Quotes
-
A productive and happy life is not something you find; it is something you make.
-
Our nettlesome task is to discover how to organize our strength into compelling power.
-
If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as a Michaelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, 'Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.
-
We must see that peace represents a sweeter music, a cosmic melody, that is far superior to the discords of war.
-
There are more Negroes in jail with me than there are on the voting rolls.
-
Babies, we are told, are the latest news from heaven.
-
We must learn that to expect God to do everything while we do nothing is not faith but superstition.
-
[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.
-
Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.
-
One of the great liabilities of history is that all too many people fail to remain awake through great periods of social change. Every society has its protectors of status quo and its fraternities of the indifferent who are notorious for sleeping through revolutions. Today, our very survival depends on our ability to stay awake, to adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant and to face the challenge of change.
-
While the question of who killed President Kennedy is important, the question 'what killed him' is more important.
-
We must substitute courage for caution.
-
Our eternal message of hope is that dawn will come.
-
The unemployed, poverty-stricken white man must be made to realize that he is in the very same boat with the Negro. Together, they could exert massive pressure on the government to get jobs for all. Together, they could form a grand alliance. Together, they could merge all people for the good of all.
-
Let us therefore continue our triumphal march to the realization of the American dream... for all of us today, the battle is in our hands... The road ahead is not altogether a smooth one. There are no broad highways that lead us easily and inevitably to quick solutions... We are still in for the season of suffering... How long? Not long. Because no lie can live forever... our God is marching on.
-
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.
-
The limitation of riots, moral questions aside, is that they cannot win and their participants know it. Hence, rioting is not revolutionary but reactionary because it invites defeat. It involves an emotional catharsis, but it must be followed by a sense of futility.
-
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.
-
Wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.
-
If I wish to compose or write or pray or preach well, I must be angry. Then all the blood in my veins is stirred, and my understanding is sharpened.
-
Courage faces fear and thereby masters it.
-
My obligation is to do the right thing. The rest is in God's hands.
-
We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.
-
People with good intentions but limited understanding are more dangerous than people with total ill will.