Martin Luther King, Jr. Quotes
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I choose to give my life for those who have been left out of the sunlight of opportunity.
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We cannot walk alone. And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back.
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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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The contemporary church is so often a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. It is so often the arch supporter of the status quo.
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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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A man can't ride your back unless it's bent.
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Don't let anybody make you think God chose America as His divine messianic force to be a sort of policeman of the whole world.
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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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The negro cannot win the respect of the white people of the south or the peoples of the world if he is willing to sell the future of his children for his personal and immediate comfort and safety.
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But now I must affirm that it is just as wrong, or perhaps even more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends.
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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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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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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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I have an ultimate faith in America and an audacious faith in mankind.
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The poor never get the job done they are sleepy.
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America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked 'insufficient funds.'
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On some positions, cowardice asks the question, is it expedient? And then expedience comes along and asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? Conscience asks the question, is it right? There comes a time when one must take the position that is neither safe nor politic nor popular, but he must do it because conscience tells him it is right.
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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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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.
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The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.
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Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane.
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Are you able to accept blows without retaliating?" and "Are you able to endure the ordeals of jail?"
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The time is always right to do what is right.
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History is the long and tragic story of the fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily.