Martin Luther King, Jr. Quotes
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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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I decide on the basis of conscience. A genuine leader doesn't reflect consensus, he molds consensus.
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Use me, God. Show me how to take who I am, who I want to be, and what I can do, and use it for a purpose greater than myself.
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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.
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While the question of who killed President Kennedy is important, the question 'what killed him' is more important.
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World peace through nonviolent means is neither absurd nor unattainable. All other methods have failed. Thus we must begin anew. Nonviolence is a good starting point. Those of us who believe in this method can be voices of reason, sanity, and understanding amid the voices of violence, hatred, and emotion. We can very well set a mood of peace out of which a system of peace can be built.
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Education must enable a man to become more efficient, to achieve with increasing facility the legitimate goals of his life.
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I have consistently preached that nonviolence demands that the means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek.
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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.
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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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As long as the mind is enslaved, the body can never be free.
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Wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.
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If we are to go forward, we must go back and rediscover those precious values - that all reality hinges on moral foundations and that all reality has spiritual control.
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There is nothing new about poverty. What is new, however, is that we have the resources to get rid of it.
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Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political moral questions of our time.
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It is a strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually time is neutral. It can be used either destructively or constructively. I am coming to feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people.
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At times, life is hard, as hard as crucible steel. It has its bleak and painful moments. Like the ever flowing water of a river, life has its moments of drought and its moments of flood. Like the ever-changin cycle of the seasons, life has the soothing warmth of the summers and the piercing chill of its winters. But through it all, God walks with us. Never forget that God is able to lift you from the fatigue of despair to the buoyancy of hope, and transform dark and desolate valleys into sunlit paths of inner peace.
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I just want to leave a committed life behind.
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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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We must remember that intelligence is not enough. Intelligence plus character--that is the goal of true education. The complete education gives one not only power of concentration, but worthy objectives upon which to concentrate. The broad education will, therefore, transmit to one not only the accumulated knowledge of the race but also the accumulated experience of social living. If we are not careful, our colleges will produce a group of close-minded, unscientific, illogical propagandists, consumed with immoral acts. Be careful, brethren! Be careful, teachers!
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We must come to see with the distinguished jurist of yesterday that "justice too long delayed is justice denied."
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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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History is the long and tragic story of the fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily.
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There is no sound more powerful than the marching feet of a determined people.