Martin Luther King, Jr. Quotes
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Love is basic for the very survival of mankind. I'm convinced that love is the only absolute ultimately; love is the highest good. He who loves has somehow discovered the meaning of ultimate reality. He who hates does not know God; he who hates has no knowledge of God. Love is the supreme unifying principle of life.
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The curse of poverty has no justification in our age. It is socially as cruel and blind as the practice of cannibalism at the dawn of civilization, when men ate each other because they had not yet learned to take food from the soil or to consume the abundant animal life around them. The time has come for us to civilize ourselves by the total, direct and immediate abolition of poverty.
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What are you doing for others?
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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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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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Nothing degrades a man do more than the allowed stoop so low as to hate someone.
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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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Have we not come to such an impasse in the modern world that we must love our enemies - or else? The chain reaction of evil - hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars - must be broken, or else we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.
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The hope of the world is still in dedicated minorities. The trail-blazers in human, scientific and religious freedom have always been in a minority.
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All life is interrelated. The agony of the poor impoverishes the rich; the betterment of the poor enriches the rich. We are inevitably our brother's keeper because we are our brother's brother. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.
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We are out to defeat injustice and not white persons who may be unjust.
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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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Voting is the foundation stone for political action.
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To sway an audience, you must watch them as you speak.
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Many men cry Peace! Peace! but they refuse to do the things that make for peace.
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You are resisting, but you've come to see that tactically as well as morally, it is better to be nonviolent.If one would, didn't want to deal with the moral questions, it would just be impractical for the Negro to talk about making his struggle a violent one.
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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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Today, is a great day to make a difference for someone. 'I have a dream'.
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Courage is an inner resolution to go forward despite obstacles; Cowardice is submissive surrender to circumstances.
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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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Your self-sacrificing devotion to your purpose in life and your unwavering faith will carry you through times of difficulty.
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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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[nonviolence] seeks to secure moral ends through moral means.
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My mommy always said there were no monsters - no real ones - but there are.