Martin Luther King, Jr. Quotes
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It’s all right to tell a man to lift himself by his own bootstraps, but it is cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps.
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When you cut facilities, slash jobs, abuse power, discriminate, drive people into deeper poverty & shoot people dead whilst refusing to provide answers or justice, the people will rise up & express their anger & frustration if you refuse to hear their cries. A riot is the language of the unheard.
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Alienation is a form of living death. It is the acid of despair that dissolves society.
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The Christians who engaged in infamous persecutions and shameful inquisitions were not evil men but misguided men. The churchmen who felt they had an edict from God to withstand the progress of science, whether in the form of a Copernican revolution or a Darwinian theory of natural selection, were not mischievous men but misinformed men. And so Christ's words from the cross are written in sharp-edged terms across some of the most inexpressible tragedies of history: 'They know not what they do'.
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Success, recognition, and conformity are the bywords of the modern world where everyone seems to crave the anesthetizing security of being identified with the majority.
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The words 'bad timing' came to be ghosts haunting our every move in Birmingham. Yet people who used this argument were ignorant of the background of our planning...they did not realize that it was ridiculous to speak of timing when the clock of history showed that the Negro had already suffered one hundred years of delay.
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Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.
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Power is the ability to achieve purpose.
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Freedom only comes through persistent revolt, through persistent agitation, through persistently rising up against the system of evil.
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If a person sweeps streets for a living, he should sweep them as Michelangelo painted, as Beethoven composed, as Shakespear wrote.
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A Church that has lost its voice for justice is a Church that has lost its relevance in the world.
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Whenever men and women straighten their backs up, they are going somewhere, because a man can't ride your back unless it is bent.
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If a man has not discovered something that he will die for, he isn't fit to live.
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As we have seen, the first public expression of disenchantment with nonviolence arose around the question of 'self-defense.' In a sense this is a false issue, for the right to defend one's home and one's person when attacked has been guaranteed through the ages by common law.
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Men often hate each other because they fear each other; they fear each other because they don't know each other; they don't know each other because they can not communicate; they can not communicate because they are separated.
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...we must realize that a vast majority of believers are still searching and will continue to search for the being who is the "source of human good." Those who seek with clear heads and sincere hearts will in some measure find. Of course the true seeker will realize that there is no one way to find God. To be sure, there are many possible ways of finding God.
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A law is unjust if it is inflicted on a minority that, as a result of being denied the right to vote, had no part in enacting or devising the law. Who can say that the legislature of Alabama which set up the state's segregation laws was democratically elected?
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We must meet the forces of hate with the power of love.
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A man who won't die for something is not fit to live.
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We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak.
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The hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who remain neutral in times of great moral conflict.
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Everyone has an opportunity to be great because everyone has an opportunity to serve.
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The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands in times of challenge and controversy. The true neighbor will risk his position, his prestige, and even his life for the welfare of others. In dangerous valleys and hazardous pathways, he will lift some bruised and beaten brother to a higher and more noble life.
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I was not afraid of the words of the violent, but of the silence of the honest.