Martin Luther King, Jr. Quotes
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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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Man is man because he is free to operate within the framework of his destiny. He is free to deliberate, to make decisions, and to choose between alternatives.
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To have serpentlike qualities devoid of dovelike qualities is to be passionless, mean, and selfish.
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A social movement that only moves people is merely a revolt. A movement that changes both people and institutions is a revolution.
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Be the best of whatever you are.
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We must build dikes of courage to hold back the flood of fear.
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Just as it is the duty of all men to obey just laws, so it is the duty of all men to disobey unjust laws.
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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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Keep feeling the need for being first. But I want you to be the first in love. I want you to be the first in moral excellence. I want you to be the first in generosity.
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Vanity asks, is it popular? Politics ask, will it work? But conscience and morality ask, is it right?
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Love is creative, understanding goodwill for all men. It is the refusal to defeat any individual.
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A religion true to its nature must also be concerned about man's social conditions....A ny religion that professes to be concerned with the souls of men and is not concerned with the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strangle them, and the social conditions that cripple them is a dry-as-dust religion.
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The great issue of life is to harness the drum major instinct.
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We must move forward in the days ahead with audacious faith. The moral arc of the universe is long but it bends toward justice.
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Love is a usually force able of transforming an rivalry into friend.
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If I knew that the world ends tomorrow, I, even today, plant a tree.
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Without love, there is no reason to know anyone, for love will in the end connect us to our neighbors, our children and our hearts.
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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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We have waited for more than three hundred and forty years for our constitutional and God-given rights.
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Right defeated is stronger than evil triumphant.
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In a real sense faith is total surrender to God.
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The principle of nonviolent resistance seeks to reconcile the truths of two opposites-Acquiescence and violence -while avoiding the extremes and immoralities of both.
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I still believe that one day mankind will bow before the altars of God and be crowned triumphant over war and bloodshed, and nonviolent redemptive goodwill will proclaim the rule of the land.
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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.