Martin Luther King, Jr. Quotes
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The labor movement was the principal force that transformed misery and despair into hope and progress.
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Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest.
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I refuse to accept the idea that man is mere flotsam and jetsam in the river of life, unable to influence the unfolding events which surround him.
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Christianity affirms that at the heart of reality is a Heart, a loving Father who works through history for the salvation of His children. Man cannot save himself, for man is not the measure of all things and humanity is not God. Bound by the chains of his own sin and finiteness, man needs a Savior.
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Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and establish such creative tension that a community that has consistently refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue.
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In the event of a violent revolution, we would be sorely outnumbered. And when it was all over, the Negro would face the same unchanged conditions, the same squalor and deprivation-the only difference being that his bitterness would be even more intense, his disenchantment even more abject. Thus, in purely practical as well as moral terms, the American Negro has no rational alternative to nonviolence.
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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 man who won't die for something is not fit to live.
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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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I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream.
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Our nation was born in genocide when it embraced the doctrine that the original American, the Indian, was an inferior race. ... We are perhaps the only nation which tried as a matter of national policy to wipe out its indigenous population. Moreover, we elevated that tragic experience into a noble crusade. Indeed, even today we have not permitted ourselves to reject or to feel remorse for this shameful episode.
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The means by which we live have outdistanced the ends for which we live.
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America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked 'insufficient funds.'
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The end of violence or the aftermath of violence is bitterness. The aftermath of nonviolence is reconciliation and the creation of a beloved community. A boycott is never an end within itself. It is merely a means to awaken a sense of shame within the oppressor but the end is reconciliation, the end is redemption.
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Morality cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. Judicial decrees may not change the heart, but they can restrain the heartless.
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We may win a battle, but if in doing so we have planted thousands of seeds of hatred and fear..the war is not over- only the present conflict has ceased. There will be no peace as long as we react to violence with violence.
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If I knew that the world ends tomorrow, I, even today, plant a tree.
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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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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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Don't let anybody take your manhood.
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Man is not made for the state; the state is made for man. To deprive man of freedom is to relegate him to the status of a thing, rather than elevate him to the status of a person. Man must never be treated as a means to the end of the state, but always as an end within himself.
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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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We must discover the power of love, the power, the redemptive power of love. And when we discover that we will be able to make of this old world a new world. We will be able to make men better. Love is the only way.
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Everybody has the blues. Everybody longs for meaning. Everybody needs to love and be loved. Everybody needs to clap hands and be happy. Everybody longs for faith. In music, especially this broad category called jazz, there is a stepping-stone to all of these.