Martin Luther King, Jr. Quotes
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In struggling for human dignity the oppressed people of the world must not allow themselves to become bitter or indulge in hate campaigns. To retaliate with hate and bitterness would do nothing but intensify the hate in the world. Along the way of life, someone must have sense enough and morality enough to cut off the chain of hate. This can be done only by projecting the ethics of love to the center of our lives.
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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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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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Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction.
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Darkness cannot be overcome with more darkness, only with light. Violence cannot be overcome with more violence, only with peace.
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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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There is a more excellent way, of love and nonviolent protest.
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Every genuine expression of love grows out of a consistent and total surrender to God.
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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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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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We stand in life at midnight; we are always at the threshold of a new dawn.
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Science deals mainly with facts; religion deals mainly with values. The two are not rivals. They are complementary.
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Within the best of us, there is some evil, and within the worst of us, there is some good. When we come to see this, we take a different attitude toward individuals.
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We are now faced with the fact 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. This is no time for apathy or complacency. This is a time for vigorous and postive action.
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The only weapon that we have in our hands this evening is the weapon of protest. That's all.
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Let us be those creative dissenters who will call our beloved nation to a higher destiny. To a new plateau of compassion, to a more noble expression of humanness.
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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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I think in this phase, after the Negro emerges in and from the desegregated society, then a great deal of time must be spent in improving standards which lag behind to a large extent because of segregation,discrimination, and the legacy of slavery.
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Is your heart right? If your heart isn't right, fix it up today.
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We must work passionately and indefatigably to bridge the gulf between our scientific progress and our moral progress. One of the great problems of mankind is that we suffer from a poverty of the spirit which stands in glaring contrast to our scientific and technological abundance. The richer we have become materially, the poorer we have become morally and spiritually.
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A lie cannot live.
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War is a poor chisel to carve out tomorrow.
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How hard it is for people to live without someone to look down upon-really to look down upon. It is not just that they feel cheated out of someone to hate. It is that they are compelled to look more closely into themselves and what they don't like about themselves.
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There is some good in the worst of us, and some evil in the best of us.