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As we have seen, the first public expression of disenchantment with nonviolence arose around the question of 'self-defense.' In a sense this is a false issue, for the right to defend one's home and one's person when attacked has been guaranteed through the ages by common law.
Martin Luther King, Jr. -
I've always tried to be what I call militantly nonviolent. I don't believe that anyone could seriously accuse me of not being totally committed to the breakdown of segregation.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
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And so we shall have to do more than register and more than vote; we shall have to create leaders who embody virtues we can respect, who have moral and ethical principles we can applaud with enthusiasm.
Martin Luther King, Jr. -
Many of the ugly pages of American history have been obscured and forgotten....America owes a debt of justice which it has only begun to pay. If it loses the will to finish or slackens in its determination, history will recall its crimes and the country that would be great will lack the most indispensable element of greatness-justice.
Martin Luther King, Jr. -
You have very little morally persuasive power with people who can feel your underlying contempt.
Martin Luther King, Jr. -
The universe is under the control of a loving purpose, and that in the struggle for righteousness man has cosmic companionship (angels). Behind the harsh appearance of the world there is a benign power.
Martin Luther King, Jr. -
We may have all come on different ships, but we're in the same boat now.
Martin Luther King, Jr. -
I am not afraid of the word tension.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
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We are challenged to develop a world perspective. No individual can live alone, no nation can live alone, and anyone who feels that he can live alone is sleeping through a revolution. The world in which we live is geographically one.
Martin Luther King, Jr. -
As a young man with most of my life ahead of me, I decided early to give my life to something eternal and absolute. Not to these little gods that are here today and gone tomorrow. But to God who is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
Martin Luther King, Jr. -
Sooner or later, all the peoples of the world will have to discover a way to live together in peace, and thereby transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood.
Martin Luther King, Jr. -
As marvelous as the stars is the mind of the person who studies them.
Martin Luther King, Jr. -
Before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth, we were here. Before the pen of Jefferson etched across the pages of history the majestic words of the Declaration of Independence, we were here. If the inexpressible cruelties of slavery could not stop us, the opposition we now face will surely fail. We will win our freedom because the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of God are embodied in our echoing demands.
Martin Luther King, Jr. -
As television beamed the image of this extraordinary gathering across the border oceans, everyone who believed in man's capacity to better himself had a moment of inspiration and confidence in the future of the human race.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Negro leaders sought to negotiate with the city fathers. But the political leaders consistently refused to engage in good-faith negotiation.
Martin Luther King, Jr. -
Our lives are not fully lived if we're not willing to die for those we love, for what we believe.
Martin Luther King, Jr. -
We will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters.
Martin Luther King, Jr. -
The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands in times of challenge and controversy. The true neighbor will risk his position, his prestige, and even his life for the welfare of others. In dangerous valleys and hazardous pathways, he will lift some bruised and beaten brother to a higher and more noble life.
Martin Luther King, Jr. -
The Christians who engaged in infamous persecutions and shameful inquisitions were not evil men but misguided men. The churchmen who felt they had an edict from God to withstand the progress of science, whether in the form of a Copernican revolution or a Darwinian theory of natural selection, were not mischievous men but misinformed men. And so Christ's words from the cross are written in sharp-edged terms across some of the most inexpressible tragedies of history: 'They know not what they do'.
Martin Luther King, Jr. -
The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
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We have before us the glorious opportunity to inject a new dimension of love into the veins of our civilization.
Martin Luther King, Jr. -
When I took up the cross I recognized it's meaning. The cross is something that you bear, and ultimately, that you die on.
Martin Luther King, Jr. -
There is nothing in all the world greater than freedom. It is worth paying for; it is worth going to jail for. I would rather be a free pauper than a rich slave. I would rather die in abject poverty with my convictions than live in inordinate riches with the lack of self respect.
Martin Luther King, Jr. -
The human heart is like a ship on a stormy sea driven about by winds blowing from all four corners of heaven.
Martin Luther King, Jr.