Martin Luther King, Jr. Quotes
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I would be misleading you if I made you feel that we could win a violent campaign. It's impractical even to think about it. The minute we start, we will end up getting many more people killed unnecessarily. Now, I'm ready to die myself. Many other committed people are ready to die. If you believe in something firmly, if you believe in it truly, if you believe it in your heart, you are willing to die for it, but I'm not going to advocate a method that brings about unnecessary death.
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[nonviolence] seeks to secure moral ends through moral means.
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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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But alas! Science cannot now rescue us, for even the scientist is lost in the terrible midnight of our age. Indeed, science gave us the very instruments that threaten to bring universal suicide.
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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.
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I want to suggest some of the things that should begin your life's blueprint. Number one...should be a deep belief in your own dignity. Your worth and your own somebodiness... Always feel that you count. Always feel that you have worth, and always feel that your life has ultimate significance.
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You have to keep moving forward.
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Love is creative, understanding goodwill for all men. It is the refusal to defeat any individual.
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Worship is as natural to the human family as the sing of the sun is to the cosmic order.
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The law of "An eye for an eye" will eventually leave everyone blind.
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I imagine you already know that I am much more socialistic in my economic theory than capitalistic. And yet I am not so opposed to capitalism that I have failed to see its relative merits. It started out with a noble and high motive, to block the trade monopolies of nobles, but like most human systems it falls victim to the very thing it was revolting against. So today capitalism has outlived its usefulness. It has brought about a system that takes necessities from the masses to give luxuries to the classes.
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The early Christians rejoiced when they were deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the Church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles o popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society.
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Violence never really deals with the basic evil of the situation. Violence may murder the murderer, but it doesn’t murder murder. Violence may murder the liar, but it doesn’t murder lie; it doesn’t establish truth. Violence may even murder the dishonest man, but it doesn’t murder dishonesty. Violence may go to the point of murdering the hater, but it doesn’t murder hate. It may increase hate. It is always a descending spiral leading nowhere. This is the ultimate weakness of violence: It multiplies evil and violence in the universe. It doesn’t solve any problems.
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We still have a choice today: nonviolence coesistence or violent coannihilation.
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And when you discover what you will be in your life, set out to do it as if God Almighty called you at this particular moment in history to do it. Don't just set out to do a good job.
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Life's piano can only produce melodies of brotherhood (and sisterhood) when it is recognized that the black keys are as basic, necessary and beautiful as the white keys.
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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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One of the great liabilities of history is that all too many people fail to remain awake through great periods of social change.
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Make a career of humanity. Commit yourself to the struggle for equal rights.
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I’ve been to the Mountaintop.
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Rioting is not revolutionary.
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It's not how long you live, it's how well you live.
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Hate destroys the very structure of the personality of the hater. [...] when you start hating anybody, it destroys the very center of your creative response to life and the universe; so love everybody.
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We ain't goin' study war no more.