Martin Luther King, Jr. Quotes
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Courage faces fear and thereby masters it. Cowardice represses fear and is thereby mastered by it.
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For you will never be what you ought to be until they [your fellow humans] are what they ought to be.
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Even if I were certain that the world would end tomorrow, I would plant a tree this very day.
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Nonviolence is the most potent technique for oppressed people. Unearned suffering is redemptive.
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We all can't be famous but we can all be great and we become great when we serve others.
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Without hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the primitive forces of social stagnation. So we must help time and realize that the time is always ripe to do right.
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It is not possible to be in favor of justice for some people and not be in favor of justice for all people.
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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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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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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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Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church's often vocal sanction of things as they are.
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I know that love is ultimately the only answer to mankind's problems. And I'm going to talk about it everywhere I go. I know it isn't popular to talk about it in some circles today. I'm not talking about emotional bosh when I talk about love, I'm talking about a strong, demanding love.
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There is nothing more dangerous than to build a society with a large segment of people in that society who feel that they have no stake in it; who feel that that have nothing to lose. People who have stake in their society, protect that society, but when they don't have it, they unconsciously want to destroy it.
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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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We have no alternative but to protest. For many years we have shown an amazing patience... But we come here tonight to be saved from that patience that makes us patient with anything less than freedom and justice.
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Lord help me to see M. L. King as M. L. King in his true perspective.
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The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state. It must be the guide and the critic of the state, and never its tool. If the church does not recapture its prophetic zeal, it will become an irrelevant social club without moral or spiritual authority.
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There is a power in love that our world has not discovered yet. Jesus discovered it centuries ago. Mahatma Gandhi of India discovered it a few years ago, but most men and most women never discover it. For they believe in hitting for hitting; they believe in an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth; they believe in hating for hating; but Jesus comes to us and says, 'This isn't the way.'
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Capital punishment is against the best judgment of modern criminology and, above all, against the highest expression of love in the nature of God.
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We ain't goin' study war no more.
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It's not how long a man lives, but how well he uses the time allotted him.
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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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The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward the goal of political independence, and we still creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward the gaining of a cup of coffee at a lunch counter.
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This is the great new problem of mankind. We have inherited a large house, a great ‘world house’ in which we have to live together– black and white, Easterner and Westerner, Gentile and Jew, Catholic and Protestant, Muslim and Hindu– a family unduly separated in ideas, culture and interest, who, because we can never again live apart, must learn somehow to live with each other in peace.