Martin Luther King, Jr. Quotes
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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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If you have not discovered something you are willing to die for, then you are not fit to live.
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It does not matter how long you live, but how well you do it.
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The bombs in Vietnam explode at home; they destroy the hopes and possibilities for a decent America.
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Call it democracy, or call it democratic socialism, but there must be a better distribution of wealth within this country for all God's children.
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Babies, we are told, are the latest news from heaven.
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The choice is not between violence and nonviolence but between nonviolence and nonexistence.
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I was convinced that worship at its best is a social experience with people of all levels of life coming together to realize their oneness and unity under God. Whenever the church, consciously or unconsciously, caters to one class it loses the spiritual force of the "whosoever will, let him come, doctrine and is in danger of becoming a little more than a social club with a thin veneer of religiosity."
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We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was “legal” and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was “illegal.” It was “illegal” to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler’s Germany. Even so, I am sure that, had I lived in Germany at the time, I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers. If todayI lived in a Communist country where certain principles dear to the Christian faith are suppressed, I would openly advocate disobeying that country's antireligious laws.
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Even if they try to kill you, you develop the inner conviction that there are some things so precious, some things so eternally true that they are worth dying for. And if a person has not found something to die for, that person isn't fit to live!
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The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy... In fact, violence merely increases hate. So it goes. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.
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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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I may be crucified for my beliefs and, if I am, you can say, "He died to make men free.
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Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.
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Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral. It is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding; it seeks to annihilate rather than to convert. Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love.
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Three simple words can describe the nature of the social revolution that is talking place and what Negroes really want. They are the words "all," "now," and "here."
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The reason I can't follow the old eye-for-an-eye philosophy is that it ends up leaving everyone blind.
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The day we see the truth and cease to speak is the day we begin to die.
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Please be peaceful. We believe in law and order. We are not advocating violence, I want you to love your enemies... for what we are doing is right, what we are doing is just -- and God is with us.
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We aren't going to have peace on Earth until we recognize the basic fact of the interrelated structure of all reality.
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Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane.
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Our children need our presence, not our presents.
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I have decided to love. If you are seeking the highest good, I think you can find it through love. And the beautiful thing is that we are moving against wrong when we do it, because John was right, God is love. He who hates does not know God, but he who has love has the key that unlocks the door to the meaning of ultimate reality.
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I choose to give my life for those who have been left out of the sunlight of opportunity.