Martin Luther King, Jr. Quotes
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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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Never before have I written so long a letter. I'm afraid it is much too long to take your precious time. I can assure you that it would have been much shorter if I had been writing from a comfortable desk, but what else can one do when he is alone in a narrow jail cell, other than write long letters, think long thoughts, and pray long prayers?
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Our nettlesome task is to discover how to organize our strength into compelling power.
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If the Negro is to achieve the goal of integration, he must organize himself into a militant and nonviolent mass movement.
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To have peace in the world, men & nations must embrace the nonviolent assertion that ends and means must cohere.
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I imagine you already know that I am much more socialistic in my economic theory than capitalistic.
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If you want to be important-wonderful. If you want to be recognized-wonderful. If you want to be great-wonderful. But recognize that he who is greatest among you shall be your servant. That's a new definition of greatness.
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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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Cowardice is submissive surrender to circumstances.
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Violence often brings about momentary results.
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There is some good in the worst of us, and some evil in the best of us.
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A riot is the language of the unheard. On blacks in America; address at Birmingham AL.
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The question is no longer between violence and non-violence it is between non-violence and non-existence.
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The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy.
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The intellectual and moral satisfaction that I failed to gain from the utilitarianism of Bentham and Mill, the revolutionary methods of Marx and Lenin, the social contract theory of Hobbes, the "back to nature" optimism of Rousseau, and the superman philosophy of Nietzsche, I found in the nonviolent resistance philosophy of Gandhi. I came to feel that this was the only morally and practically sound method open to oppressed people in their struggle for freedom.
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Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable . . .
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The road to freedom is a difficult, hard road. It always makes for temporary setbacks.
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There is no sound more powerful than the marching feet of a determined people.
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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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Jesus recognized that love is greater than like.
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Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism... We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now.
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Within the best of us, there is some evil, and within the worst of us, there is some good. When we come to see this, we take a different attitude toward individuals.
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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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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.