Martin Luther King, Jr. Quotes
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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 road to freedom is a difficult, hard road. It always makes for temporary setbacks.
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When any society says that I cannot marry a certain person, that society has cut off a segment of my freedom.
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The sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality.
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Violence multiplies violence.
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A religion true to its nature must also be concerned about man's social conditions....A ny religion that professes to be concerned with the souls of men and is not concerned with the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strangle them, and the social conditions that cripple them is a dry-as-dust religion.
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Wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.
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Justice too long delayed is justice denied.
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If I lived in a Communist country today where certain principles dear to the Christian faith are suppressed, I believe I would openly advocate disobeying these anti-religious laws.
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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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The end of violence or the aftermath of violence is bitterness. The aftermath of nonviolence is reconciliation and the creation of a beloved community. A boycott is never an end within itself. It is merely a means to awaken a sense of shame within the oppressor but the end is reconciliation, the end is redemption.
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I have a dream that one day little black boys and girls will be holding hands with little white boys and girls.
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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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Loving Your Enemies... Far from being the pious injunction of a utopian dreamer, this demand is an absolute necessity for the survival of our civilization. Yes it is love that will save our world and civilization; love even for our enemies.
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[Malcolm X] had said a great deal about nonviolence, criticizing nonviolence, and saying that I approved of Negro men and women being bitten by dogs and the fire hoses, and I say, say go on and not defend yourself. I think this kind of response grew out of the build up, all of the talk about my being a sort of polished Uncle Tom.
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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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My obligation is to do the right thing. The rest is in God's hands.
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A right delayed is a right denied.
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Our children need our presence, not our presents.
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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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[People] don't see that there's a great deal of a difference between nonresistance to evil and nonviolent resistance.
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Just as it is the duty of all men to obey just laws, so it is the duty of all men to disobey unjust laws.
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I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice.