Martin Luther King, Jr. Quotes
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When a nation becomes obsessed with the guns of war, it loses its social perspective.... There is something about a war like this that makes people insensitive. It dulls the conscience. It strengthens the forces of reaction, and it brings into being bitterness and hatred and violence.
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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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Life isn't worth living until you have found something worth dying for.
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Be the best of whatever you are.
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Every now and then I think about my own death, and I think about my own funeral. Every now and then I ask myself, 'What is it that I would want said?' I'd like somebody to mention that day, that Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to give his life serving others. I'd like for somebody to say that day, that Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to love somebody.
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I plan to stand by nonviolence, because I have found it to be a philosophy of life that regulates not only my dealings in the struggle for racial justice, but also my dealings with people, and with my own self.
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If you lose hope, somehow you lose the vitality that keeps moving, you lose that courage to be, that quality that helps you go on in spite of it all. And so today I still have a dream.
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Education without direction is a one-sided social value. Direct action without education is a meaningless expression of pure energy.
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The Darwinian concept of the survival of the fittest has been substituted by a philosophy of the survival of the slickest.
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It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important.
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Love is the only creative, redemptive, transforming power, in the universe.
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For years, I labored with the idea of reforming the existing institutions in the South, a little change here, a little change there. Now I feel quite differently. I think you've got to have a reconstruction of the entire system, a revolution of values.
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We ain't goin' study war no more.
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The most dangerous type of atheism is not theoretical atheism, but practical atheism -that's the most dangerous type. And the world, even the church, is filled up with people who pay lip service to God and not life service. And there is always a danger that we will make it appear externally that we believe in God when internally we don't. We say with our mouths that we believe in him, but we live with our lives like he never existed. That is the ever-present danger confronting religion. That's a dangerous type of atheism.
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The problem of racism, the problem of economic exploitation, and the problem of war are all tied together. These are the triple evils that are interrelated.
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Christ furnished the spirit and motivation while Gandhi furnished the method.
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Any nation or government that deprives an individual of freedom is in that moment committing an act of moral and spiritual murder. Any individual who is not concerned about his freedom commits an act of moral and spiritual suicide.
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One day we shall win freedom, but not only for ourselves. We shall so appeal to your heart and conscience that we shall win you in the process, and our victory will be a double victory.
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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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God has given each normal person a capacity to achieve some end. True, some are endowed with more talent than others, but God has left none of us talentless.
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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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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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A nation that will keep people in slavery for 244 years will "thingify" them and make them things. And therefore, they will exploit them and poor people generally economically. And a nation that will exploit economically will have to have foreign investments and everything else, and it will have to use its military might to protect them. All of these problems are tied together. What I'm saying today is that we must go from this convention and say, "America, you must be born again!"
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History has thrust something upon me from which I cannot turn away.