Martin Luther King, Jr. Quotes
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People are often led to causes and often become committed to great ideas through persons who personify those ideas. They have to find the embodiment of the idea in flesh and blood in order to commit themselves to it.
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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 true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our present policies.
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I choose to give my life for those who have been left out of the sunlight of opportunity.
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All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality.
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For all of us today, the battle is in our hands. The road ahead is not altogether a smooth one. There are no broad highways to lead us easily and inevitably to quick solutions. We must keep going.
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We must recognize that we can't solve our problems now until there is a radical redistribution of economic and political power.... a radical restructuring of the architecture of American society.
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Education must enable one to sift and weigh evidence, to discern the true from the false, the real from the unreal, and the facts from the fiction.
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Pity may represent little more than the impersonal concern which prompts the mailing of a check, but true sympathy is the personal concern which demands the giving of one's soul.
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One day we will learn that the heart can never be totally right if the head is totally wrong. Only through the bringing together of head and heart-intelligence and goodness-shall man rise to a fulfillment of his true nature.
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Now a lot of us are preachers, and all of us have our moral convictions and concerns, and so often have problems with power. There is nothing wrong with power if power is used correctly.
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Unless you have found something in life to live for that is more important to you than your own life, you will always be a slave. For all another man needs to do is threaten to take your life to get you to do his bidding.
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The great majority of Americans are suspended between these opposing attitudes. They are uneasy with injustice but unwilling yet to pay a significant price to eradicate it.
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Don't let anybody take your manhood.
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You have to keep moving forward.
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The great issue of life is to harness the drum major instinct.
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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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One who condones evils is just as guilty as the one who perpetrates it.
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Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood.
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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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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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Every genuine expression of love grows out of a consistent and total surrender to God.
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Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction.
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It's not how long you live, it's how well you live.