Martin Luther King, Jr. Quotes
-
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.
-
We must see that peace represents a sweeter music, a cosmic melody, that is far superior to the discords of war.
-
Babies, we are told, are the latest news from heaven.
-
What the Negro wants - and will not stop until he gets - is absolute and unqualified freedom and equality here in this land of his birth, and not in Africa or in some imaginary state. The Negro no longer will be tolerant of anything less than his due right and heritage. He is pursuing only that which he knows is honorably his. He knows that he is right.
-
Courage faces fear and thereby masters it.
-
The ability to lead a happy life is made, not found.
-
We have no honorable intentions in Vietnam. Our minimal expectation is to occupy it as an American colony and maintain social stability for our investments. This tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Colombia and Peru. Increasingly the role our nation has taken is the role of those who refuse to give up the privileges and pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investment.
-
While the question of who killed President Kennedy is important, the question 'what killed him' is more important.
-
Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for a new world. This is the calling of the sons of God, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response. Shall we say the odds are too great? Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard?
-
I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the eighth century prophets left their little villages and carried their "thus saith the Lord" far beyond the boundaries of their home towns; and just as the Apostle Paul left his little village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to practically every hamlet and city of the Graeco-Roman world, I too am compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my particular home town. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid.
-
There is nothing new about poverty. What is new, however, is that we have the resources to get rid of it.
-
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.
-
There is no easy way to create a world where men and women can live together... But if such a world is created in our lifetime, it will be done by rejecting the racism, materialism, and violence that has characterized Western civilization and especially by working toward a world of brotherhood, cooperation, and peace.
-
Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political moral questions of our time.
-
We aren't going to have peace on Earth until we recognize the basic fact of the interrelated structure of all reality.
-
You know, my friends, there comes a time when people get tired of being trampled over by the iron feet of oppression.
-
As long as the mind is enslaved, the body can never be free.
-
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!
-
If we are going to achieve a real equality, the U.S. will have to adopt a modified form of Socialism.
-
The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate... Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.
-
With all of its false assumptions and evil methods, communism grew as a protest against the hardships of the underprivileged. Communism in theory emphasized a classless society, and a concern for social justice, though the world knows from sad experience that in practice it created new classes and a new lexicon of injustice.
-
The Negro cannot win the respect of his oppressor by acquiescing; he merely increases the oppressor's arrogance and contempt.
-
America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked 'insufficient funds.'
-
Love is basic for the very survival of mankind. I'm convinced that love is the only absolute ultimately; love is the highest good. He who loves has somehow discovered the meaning of ultimate reality. He who hates does not know God; he who hates has no knowledge of God. Love is the supreme unifying principle of life.