Martin Luther King, Jr. Quotes
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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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We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society.
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Gandhi was inevitable. If humanity is to progress, Gandhi is inescapable. He lived, thought and acted, inspired by the vision of humanity evolving toward a world of peace and harmony. We may ignore Gandhi at our own risk.
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Every man is somebody because he is a child of God.
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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. Far from being the pious injunction of a Utopian dreamer, love is an absolute necessity for the survival of our civilization. To return hate for hate does nothing but intensify the existence of evil in the universe. Someone must have sense enough and religion enough to cut off the chain of hate and evil, and this can only be done through love.
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When we ask Negroes to abide by the law, let us also declare that the white man does not abide by law in the ghettos. Day in and day out he violates welfare laws to deprive the poor of their meager allotments; he flagrantly violates building codes and regulations; his police make a mockery of law; he violates laws on equal employment and education and the provisions of civil services. The slums are the handiwork of a vicious system of the white society; Negroes live in them, but they do not make them, any more than a prisoner makes a prison.
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Many men cry Peace! Peace! but they refuse to do the things that make for peace.
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So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.
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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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We must see that peace represents a sweeter music, a cosmic melody, that is far superior to the discords of war.
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We must face the appalling fact that we have been betrayed by both the Democratic and Republican Parties.
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Too unconcerned to love and too passionless to hate, too detached to be selfish and too lifeless to be unselfish, too indifferent to experience joy and too cold to express sorrow, they are neither dead nor alive; they merely exist.
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Slaves do not always welcome their deliverers. They become accustomed to being slaves. They would rather gear those ills they have.
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This Revolution is genuine because it was born from the same womb that always gives birth to massive social upheavals - the womb of intolerable conditions and unendurable situations.
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Forgiveness is not an occasional act, it is a constant attitude.
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Today, is a great day to make a difference for someone. 'I have a dream'.
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We talk eloquently about our commitment to the principles of Christianity, and yet our lives are saturated with the practices of paganism. We proclaim our devotion to democracy, but we sadly practice the very opposite of the democratic creed.... This strange dichotomy, this agonizing gulf between the ought and the is, represents the tragic theme of man's earthly pilgrimage.
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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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I have a dream, one dream, keep dreaming. Dream of freedom, justice dreaming, dreaming of equality and hopefully no longer required to dream them.
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The government can't make people love me, but it can keep them from lynching me.
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The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it.
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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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Darkness cannot be overcome with more darkness, only with light. Violence cannot be overcome with more violence, only with peace.
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Jazz speaks for life. The Blues tell the story of life's difficulties, and if you think for a moment, you will realize that they take the hardest realities of life and put them into music, only to come out with some new hope or sense of triumph.