Martin Luther King, Jr. Quotes
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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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Love is the most durable power in the world. This creative force is the most potent instrument available in mankind's quest for peace and security.
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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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In a real sense all life is inter-related. All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be... This is the inter-related structure of reality.
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To sway an audience, you must watch them as you speak.
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We stand in life at midnight; we are always at the threshold of a new dawn.
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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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We come humbly to say to the men in the forefront of our government that the civil rights issue is not an Ephemeral, evanescent domestic issue that can be kicked about by reactionary guardians of the status quo; it is rather an eternal moral issue which may well determine the destiny of our nation in the ideological struggle with communism. The hour is late. The clock of destiny is ticking out. We must act now, before it is too late.
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And I say to you, I have decided to stick with love, for I know that love is ultimately the only answer to mankind's problems. And I'm going to talk about it everywhere I go. For I have seen too much hate... every time I see it, I know that it does something to their faces and their personalities, and I say to myself that hate is too great a burden to bear. I have decided to love.
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The purpose of direct action is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation.
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It is not enough to say we must not wage war. It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it.
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The decision we must make now is whether we will give our allegiance to outmoded and unjust customs or to the ethical demands of the universe. As Christians we owe our allegiance to God and His will, rather than to man and his folkways.
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I'm thinking of love in action and not something where you say, "Love your enemies," and just leave it at that, but you love your enemies to the point that you're willing to sit-in at a lunch counter in order to help them find themselves. You're willing to go to jail.
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We are out to defeat injustice and not white persons who may be unjust.
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In order to love your enemies, you must begin by analyzing self.
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[nonviolence] seeks to secure moral ends through moral means.
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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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The great issue of life is to harness the drum major instinct.
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Somewhere somebody must have some sense. Men must see that force begets force, hate begets hate, toughness begets toughness. And it is all a descending spiral, ultimately ending in destruction for all and everybody. Somebody must have sense enough and morality enough to cut off the chain of hate and the chain of evil in the universe. And you do that by love.
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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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We must build dikes of courage to hold back the flood of fear. That old law about "an eye for an eye" leaves everybody blind... The time is always right to do the right thing. Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal.
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Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction.
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We have deluded ourselves into believing the myth that capitalism grew and prospered out of the Protestant ethic of hard work and sacrifices. Capitalism was built on the exploitation of black slaves and continues to thrive on the exploitation of the poor, both black and white, both here and abroad.
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I won't have any money to leave behind. I won't have the fine and luxurious things of life to leave behind. But I just want to leave a committed life behind.