Martin Luther King, Jr. Quotes
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The body is God's temple, but we are to worship God, not the temple.
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The limitation of riots, moral questions aside, is that they cannot win and their participants know it. Hence, rioting is not revolutionary but reactionary because it invites defeat. It involves an emotional catharsis, but it must be followed by a sense of futility.
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This is the unusual thing about nonviolence -- nobody is defeated, everybody shares in the victory.
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Cowardice is submissive surrender to circumstances.
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We must come to see with the distinguished jurist of yesterday that "justice too long delayed is justice denied."
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Justice too long delayed is justice denied.
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America must begin the struggle for democracy at home. The advocacy of free elections in Europe by American officials is hypocrisy when free elections are not held in great sections of America.
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The real problem is that through our scientific genius we’ve made of the world a neighborhood, but through our moral and spiritual genius we’ve failed to make of it a brotherhood.
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I may be crucified for my beliefs and, if I am, you can say, "He died to make men free.
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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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We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with a lost opportunity. . . . Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words, 'Too late.' ... Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for a new world.
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Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable . . .
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A riot is the language of the unheard. On blacks in America; address at Birmingham AL.
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I'm very glad Christ tells us to love our neighbor and not to like our neighbor because it's hard to like someone threatening your children and throwing fire bombs through your window, but He asks us to love them and that I can do.
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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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In the final analysis, means and ends must cohere because the end is preexistent in the means, and, ultimately, destructive means cannot bring about constructive ends.
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Even in the inevitable moments when all seems hopeless, men know that without hope they cannot really live, and in agonizing desperation they cry for the bread of hope.
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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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Jesus recognized that love is greater than like.
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My mommy always said there were no monsters - no real ones - but there are.
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Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity.
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The great military leaders of the past have gone, their empires have crumbled and burned to ashes. But the empire of Jesus, built solidly and majestically on the foundation of love, is still growing.
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The negro cannot win the respect of the white people of the south or the peoples of the world if he is willing to sell the future of his children for his personal and immediate comfort and safety.
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I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits.