Martin Luther King, Jr. Quotes
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Civilization and violence are antithetical concepts.
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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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Lord help me to see M. L. King as M. L. King in his true perspective.
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Means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek.
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Darkness is only driven out with light, not more darkness.
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The truth may hurt, but love helps ease the pain.
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Every crisis has both its dangers and its opportunities. Each can spell either salvation or doom.
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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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A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our present policies... True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. A true revolution of values will soon look on uneasily upon the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth with righteous indignation.
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God made the world from nothing, and if we can be nothing, then God can make something of us.
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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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Find a voice in a whisper.
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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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A man does not measure its height in moments of comfort, but in terms of change and controversy.
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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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I cannot forget that the Nobel Prize for Peace was also a commission - a commission to work harder than I had ever worked before for "the brotherhood of man".
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We can no longer afford to worship the God of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. Love is the key to the solution of the problems of the world.
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One who breaks an unjust law that conscience tells him is unjust ... is in reality expressing the highest respect for law ... We will not obey your evil laws.
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It is cheerful to God when you rejoice or laugh from the bottom of your heart.
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At the heart of all that civilization has meant and developed is 'community' - the mutually cooperative and voluntary venture of man to assume a semblance of responsibility for his brother.
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I'm grateful to God that, through the Negro church, the dimension of nonviolence entered our struggle.
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One of the most persistent ambiguities that we face is that everybody talks about peace as a goal. However, it does not take sharpest-eyed sophistication to discern that while everbody talks about peace, peace has become practically nobody's business among the power-wielders. Many men cry Peace! Peace! but they refuse to do the things that make for peace.
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Why is the church always a taillight rather than a headlight?
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We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence.