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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The softminded person always wants to freeze the moment and hold life in the gripping yoke of sameness.
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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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If I lived in China or even Russia, or any totalitarian country, Maybe I could understand some of these illegal injunctions. ... But somewhere I read of the freedom of assembly. Somewhere I read of the freedom of speech. Somewhere I read of the freedom of the press. Somewhere I read that the greatness of America is the right to protest for right.
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Darkness is only driven out with light, not more darkness.
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In his essay 'Self-Reliance' Emerson wrote, 'Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.' The Apostle Paul reminds us that whoso would be a Christian must also be a a nonconformist. Any Christian who blindly accepts the opinions of the majority and in fear and timidity follows a path of expediency and social approval is a mental and spiritual slave.
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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 need not join the mad rush to purchase an earthly fallout shelter. God is our eternal fallout shelter. From Strength to Love.
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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 Negro is the child of two cultures - Africa and America. The problem is that in the search for wholeness all too many Negroes seek to embrace only one side of their natures.
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We can walk through the darkest night with the radiant conviction that all things work together for the good.
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School takes 13 years, because that is how long it takes to break a child's spirit.
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History has thrust something upon me from which I cannot turn away.
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Courage faces fear and thereby masters it. Cowardice represses fear and is thereby mastered by it.
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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.
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Everybody has the blues. Everybody longs for meaning. Everybody needs to love and be loved. Everybody needs to clap hands and be happy. Everybody longs for faith. In music, especially this broad category called jazz, there is a stepping-stone to all of these.
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A second thing that an individual must do in seeking to love his enemy is to discover the element of good in his enemy, and everytime you begin to hate that person and think of hating that person, realize that there is some good there and look at those good points which will over – balance the bad points.
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Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
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In the event of a violent revolution, we would be sorely outnumbered. And when it was all over, the Negro would face the same unchanged conditions, the same squalor and deprivation-the only difference being that his bitterness would be even more intense, his disenchantment even more abject. Thus, in purely practical as well as moral terms, the American Negro has no rational alternative to nonviolence.
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It is not only poverty that torments the Negro; it is the fact of poverty amid plenty. It is a misery generated by the gulf between the affluence he sees in the mass media and the deprivation he experiences in his everyday life.
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Never succumb to the temptation of becoming bitter. As you press for justice, be sure to move with dignity and discipline, using only the instruments of love.
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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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Stand up for justice, stand up for truth; and God will be at your side forever.
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Money, like any other force such as electricity, is amoral and can be used for either good or evil.