Martin Luther King, Jr. Quotes
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The Negro cannot win the respect of his oppressor by acquiescing; he merely increases the oppressor's arrogance and contempt.
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We live in a world of guided missiles and misguided men.
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My obligation is to do the right thing. The rest is in God's hands.
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I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits. I believe that what self-centered men have torn down men other-centered can build up. I still believe that one day mankind will bow before the altars of God and be crowned triumphant over war and bloodshed, and nonviolent redemptive good will proclaim the rule of the land.
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Jesus recognized that love is greater than like.
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We've been in the mountain of war. We've been in the mountain of violence. We've been in the mountain of hatred long enough. It is necessary to move on now, but only by moving out of this mountain can we move to the promised land of justice and brotherhood and the Kingdom of God. It all boils down to the fact that we must never allow ourselves to become satisfied with unattained goals. We must always maintain a kind of divine discontent.
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[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.
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Agape is something of the understanding, creative, redemptive goodwill for all men. It is a love that seeks nothing in return. It is an overflowing love; it's what theologians would call the love of God working in the lives of men. And when you rise to love on this level, you begin to love men, not because they are likeable, but because God loves them.
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Friends are forever Boys are whatever.
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You can kill the dreamer, but you can't kill the dream.
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Violence multiplies violence.
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The art of acceptance is the art of making someone who has just done you a small favor wish that he might have done you a greater one.
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I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed, without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today – my own government.
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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?
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It is a sad fact that because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, and our proneness to adjust to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch-antirevolutionaries.
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Forgiveness is not an occasional act. It is a permanent attitude. That which I was not but could have been. That which I would have done but did not do. Can I find the fortitude to remember in truth,to understand, to submit, to forgive and to be free to move on in time?
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The time is always right to do what is right.
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Unless you have found something in life to live for that is more important to you than your own life, you will always be a slave. For all another man needs to do is threaten to take your life to get you to do his bidding.
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If our economic system is to survive, there has to be a better distribution of wealth ... we can't have a system where some people live in superfluous, inordinate wealth, while others live in abject deadening poverty.
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The poor never get the job done they are sleepy.
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Be an artist at whatever you do. Even if you are a street sweeper, be the Michelangelo of street sweepers.
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Every man is somebody because he is a child of God.
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Human progress never rolls in on the wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts and the persistent work of dedicated individuals who are willing to be co-workers with God and without this hard work time itself becomes an ally of the primitive forces of social stagnation.
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Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon. Indeed, it is a weapon unique in history, which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it.