Martin Luther King, Jr. Quotes
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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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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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I am what I am because of who we all are.
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War is a poor chisel to carve out tomorrow.
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We are prone to judge success by the index of our salaries or the size of our automobiles rather than by the quality of our service and relationship to mankind.
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We have flown the air like birds and swum the sea like fishes, but have yet to learn the simple act of walking the earth like brothers.
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You have to keep moving forward.
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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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And one day we must ask the question, "Why are there forty million poor people in America?" And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy.
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The principle of nonviolent resistance seeks to reconcile the truths of two opposites-Acquiescence and violence -while avoiding the extremes and immoralities of both.
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The law of "An eye for an eye" will eventually leave everyone blind.
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I think that we must face the fact that in reality, you cannot have economic and political equality without having some form of social equality. I think this is inevitable.
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The only time people do not like praise is when too much of it is going toward someone else.
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We still have a choice today: nonviolence coesistence or violent coannihilation.
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Unconditional love will have the final word in reality.
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The softminded person always wants to freeze the moment and hold life in the gripping yoke of sameness.
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Each of us is something of a schizophrenic personality, tragically divided against ourselves.
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In spite of the fact that the law of revenge solves no social problems, men continue to follow its disastrous leading. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path.
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True peace is not merely the absence of tension: it is the presence of justice.
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I came to the conclusion that there is an existential moment in your life when you must decide to speak for yourself; nobody else can speak for you.
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It's not how long you live, it's how well you live.
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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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There is a more excellent way, of love and nonviolent protest.
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As long as there is poverty in the world I can never be rich, even if I have a billion dollars. As long as diseases are rampant and millions of people in this world cannot expect to live more than twenty-eight or thirty years, I can never be totally healthy even if I just got a good checkup at Mayo Clinic. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the way our world is made. No individual or nation can stand out boasting of being independent. We are interdependent.