Martin Luther King, Jr. Quotes
-
A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.
-
A time comes when silence is betrayal. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought, within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world.
-
Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.
-
The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.
-
The universe is under the control of a loving purpose, and that in the struggle for righteousness man has cosmic companionship (angels). Behind the harsh appearance of the world there is a benign power.
-
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?
-
A Church that has lost its voice for justice is a Church that has lost its relevance in the world.
-
The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.
-
Whenever men and women straighten their backs up, they are going somewhere, because a man can't ride your back unless it is bent.
-
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.
-
"I criticize America because I love her. I want her to stand as a moral example to the world."
-
If a person sweeps streets for a living, he should sweep them as Michelangelo painted, as Beethoven composed, as Shakespear wrote.
-
I am convinced that love is the most durable power in the world. It is not an expression of impractical idealism, but of practical realism.
-
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.
-
If you can't fly then run, if you can't run then walk, if you can't walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.
-
A man who won't die for something is not fit to live.
-
Though we live in the colony of time, we are ultimately responsible to the empire of eternity.
-
Freedom only comes through persistent revolt, through persistent agitation, through persistently rising up against the system of evil.
-
I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification" - one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.
-
Alienation is a form of living death. It is the acid of despair that dissolves society.