Martin Luther King, Jr. Quotes
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If we do an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, we will be a blind and toothless nation.
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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.
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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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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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To ignore evil is to become an accomplice to it.
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The road to freedom is a difficult, hard road. It always makes for temporary setbacks.
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Certainly I'm not saying that you sit down and patiently accept injustice. I'm talking about a very strong force, where you stand up with all your might against an evil system, and you are not a coward.
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A riot is the language of the unheard. On blacks in America; address at Birmingham AL.
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America must begin the struggle for democracy at home. The advocacy of free elections in Europe by American officials is hypocrisy when free elections are not held in great sections of America.
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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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Justice too long delayed is justice denied.
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The ability to lead a happy life is made, not found.
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It's not the violence of the few that scares me, it's the silence of the many.
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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.
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And you know, it's possible that the priest and the Levite looked over that man on the ground and wondered if the robbers were still around. Or it's possible that they felt that the man on the ground was merely faking. And he was acting like he had been robbed and hurt, in order to seize them over there, lure them there for quick and easy seizure. And so the first question that the Levite asked was, "If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?" But then the Good Samaritan came by. And he reversed the question: "If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?
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Whatever my doubts, however heavy the burden, I feel that I must accept the task of helping to make this nation and this world a better place to live in - for all men, black and white alike.
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The choice is not between violence and nonviolence but between nonviolence and nonexistence.
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Wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.
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Man is not made for the state; the state is made for man. To deprive man of freedom is to relegate him to the status of a thing, rather than elevate him to the status of a person. Man must never be treated as a means to the end of the state, but always as an end within himself.
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May I stress the need for courageous, intelligent, and dedicated leadership... Leaders of sound integrity. Leaders not in love with publicity, but in love with justice. Leaders not in love with money, but in love with humanity. Leaders who can subject their particular egos to the greatness of the cause.
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We must be concerned not merely about who murdered them, but about the system, the way of life, the philosophy which produced the murderers .
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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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There is no sound more powerful than the marching feet of a determined people.
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Let no man pull you so low as to hate him.