Martin Luther King, Jr. Quotes
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We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society.
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The job of the school is to teach so well that family background is no longer an issue.
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The strong man is the man who can stand up for his rights and not hit back.
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Every man is somebody because he is a child of God.
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History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.
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It is not a sign of weakness, but a sign of high maturity, to rise to the level of self-criticism.
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A man who hasn't found anything he'd die for doesn't deserve to live.
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The law of "An eye for an eye" will eventually leave everyone blind.
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You can’t reach good ends through evil means, because the means represent the seed and the end represents the tree.
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Science investigates, religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge which is power, religion gives man wisdom which is control. Science deals mainly with facts, religion deals with values. The two are not rivals. They are complementary.
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An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.
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My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain in civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure.
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Music is the best consolation for a despaired man.
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In a real sense all life is inter-related. All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be... This is the inter-related structure of reality.
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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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There is a more excellent way, of love and nonviolent protest.
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It is my hope that as the Negro plunges deeper into the quest for freedom and justice he will plunge even deeper into the philosophy of non-violence. The Negro all over the South must come to the point that he can say to his white brother: "We will match your capacity to inflict suffering with our capacity to endure suffering. We will meet your physical force with soul force. We will not hate you, but we will not obey your evil laws. We will soon wear you down by pure capacity to suffer".
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Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.
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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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One day we will learn that the heart can never be totally right if the head is totally wrong. Only through the bringing together of head and heart-intelligence and goodness-shall man rise to a fulfillment of his true nature.
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Why should there be hunger and deprivation in any land, in any city, at any table, when man has the resources and the scientific know-how to provide all mankind with the basic necessities of life? There is no deficit in human resources. The deficit is in human will.
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A society is always eager to cover misdeeds with a cloak of forgetfulness, but no society can fully repress an ugly past when the ravages persist into the present. America owes a debt of justice which it has only begun to pay.
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Every genuine expression of love grows out of a consistent and total surrender to God.
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We can dream of an America, and a world, in which love and not money are civilization's bottom line.