Martin Luther King, Jr. Quotes
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You know, my friends, there comes a time when people get tired of being trampled over by the iron feet of oppression.
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My faith in man is, at bottom, a faith in God.
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In the final analysis the weakness of Black Power is its failure to see that the black man needs the white man and the white man needs the black man.
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Carve a tunnel of hope through the dark mountain of disappointment.
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My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain in civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure.
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I am not interested in power for power's sake, but I'm interested in power that is moral, that is right and that is good.
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The trailblazers in human, academic, scientific and religious freedom have always been nonconformists.
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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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Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and nonviolence, when it helps us to see the enemy's point of view, to hear his questions, to know his assessment of ourselves. For from his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition.
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My mommy always said there were no monsters - no real ones - but there are.
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We have waited for more than three hundred and forty years for our constitutional and God-given rights.
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Hate begets hate; violence begets violence; toughness begets a greater toughness. We must meet the forces of hate with the power of love.
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I imagine you already know that I am much more socialistic in my economic theory than capitalistic. And yet I am not so opposed to capitalism that I have failed to see its relative merits. It started out with a noble and high motive, to block the trade monopolies of nobles, but like most human systems it falls victim to the very thing it was revolting against. So today capitalism has outlived its usefulness. It has brought about a system that takes necessities from the masses to give luxuries to the classes.
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Each one of us has the power to make others feel better or worse. Making others feel better is much more fun than making others feel worse. Making others feel better generally makes us feel better.
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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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To have serpentlike qualities devoid of dovelike qualities is to be passionless, mean, and selfish.
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The ultimate solution to the race problem lies in the willingness of men to obey the unenforceable.
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Whatever we do, we must keep God in the forefront. Let us be Christian in all of our actions. But I want to tell you this evening that it is not enough for us to talk about love, love is one of the pivotal points of the Christian face, faith. There is another side called justice. And justice is really love in calculation. Justice is love correcting that which revolts against love.
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We must combine the toughness of the serpent with the softness of the dove, a tough mind and a tender heart.
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Personalism's insistence that only personality-finite and infinite-is ultimately real strengthened me in two convictions: it gave me metaphysical and philosophical grounding for the idea of a personal God, and it gave me a metaphysical basis for the dignity and worth of all human personality.
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The holy passion of friendship is of so sweet and steady and loyal and enduring a nature that it will last through a whole lifetime, if not asked to lend money In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.
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I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of thermonuclear destruction... I believe that even amid today's mortar bursts and whining bullets, there is still hope for a brighter tomorrow... I still believe that one day mankind will bow before the altars of God and be crowned triumphant over war and bloodshed.
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Why should there be hunger and deprivation in any land, in any city, at any table, when man has the resources and the scientific know-how to provide all mankind with the basic necessities of life? There is no deficit in human resources. The deficit is in human will.
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What good is having the right to sit at a lunch counter if you can't afford to buy a hamburger?