Martin Luther King, Jr. Quotes
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We have a great dream. It started way back in 1776, and God grant that America will be true to her dream.
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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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A lie cannot live.
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We must all learn to live together as brothers. Or we will all perish together as foolsFor some strange reason 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.
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Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.
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Difficult and painful as it is, we must walk on in the days ahead with an audacious faith in the future.
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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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And violence is impractical, because the old eye for an eye philosophy ends up leaving everybody blind .. It is immoral because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for everybody. Means and ends are inseparable. The means represent the ideal in the making; in the long run of history destructive means cannot bring about constructive ends.
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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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Nothing is so much needed as a secure family life for a people seeking to rise out of poverty and backwardness.
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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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Forgiveness is not an occasional act, it is a constant attitude.
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I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be.
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My faith in man is, at bottom, a faith in God.
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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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This will be the day when we shall bring into full realization the dream of American democracy - a dream yet unfulfilled. A dream of equality of opportunity, of privilege and property widely distributed; a dream of a land where men will not take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few.
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The principle of self defense, even involving weapons and bloodshed, has never been condemned, even by Gandhi.
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This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism.
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Everybody can be great, because everybody can serve. [...] You only need a heart full of grace.
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One day the absurdity of the almost universal human belief in the slavery of other animals will be palpable. We shall then have discovered our souls and become worthier of sharing this planet with them.
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Education without social action is a one-sided value because it has no true power potential. Social action without education is a weak expression of pure energy. Deeds uninformed by educated thought can take false directions. When we go into action and confront our adversaries, we must be as armed with knowledge as they. Our policies should have the strength of deep analysis beneath them to be able to challenge the clever sophistries of our opponents.
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A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on the installment plan.
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Unconditional love will have the final word in reality.
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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.