Martin Luther King, Jr. Quotes
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In our society it is murder, psychologically, to deprive a man of a job or an income. You are in substance saying to that man that he has no right to exist. You are in a real way depriving him of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, denying in his case the very creed of his society.
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I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits.
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Means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek.
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If I were constantly worried about death, I couldn't function. After a while, if your life is more or less constantly in peril, you come to a point where you accept the possibility philosophically.
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Within the best of us, there is some evil, and within the worst of us, there is some good. When we come to see this, we take a different attitude toward individuals.
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I am now convinced that the simplest approach will prove to be the most effective -- the solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a now widely discussed measure: the guaranteed income.
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I must face the fact, as all others in positions of leadership must do, that America today is an extremely sick nation, and that something could well happen to me at any time. I feel, though, that my cause is so right, so moral, that if I should lose my life, in some way it would aid the cause.
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Nonviolent action, the Negro saw, was the way to supplement, not replace, the progress of change. It was the way to divest himself of passivity without arraying himself in vindictive force.
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Peace is not simply the absence of conflict, but the existence of justice for all people.
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Love is the only creative, redemptive, transforming power, in the universe.
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When people get caught up with that which is right and they are willing to sacrifice for it, there is no stopping point short of victory.
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Life isn't worth living until you have found something worth dying for.
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Once you become dedicated to a cause, personal security is not the goal. What will happen to you personally does not matter. My cause, my race, is worth dying for.
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An eye for an eye leaves everybody blind.
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A true revolution of values will see that the western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.
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I'm concerned about a better world. I'm concerned about justice; I'm concerned about brotherhood; I'm concerned about truth. And when one is concerned about that, he can never advocate violence. For through violence you may murder a murderer, but you can't murder murder. Through violence you may murder a liar, but you can't establish truth. Through violence you may murder a hater, but you can't murder hate through violence. Darkness cannot put out darkness; only light can do that.
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There's something about love that builds up and is creative. There is something about hate that tears down and is destructive. So love your enemies.
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No one really knows why they are alive until they know what they'd die for.
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I still have a dream today that one day war will come to an end, that men will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks, that nations will no longer rise up against nations, neither will they study war any more.
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The Negroes of America had taken the President, the press and the pulpit at their word when they spoke in broad terms of freedom and justice. But the absence of brutality and unregenerate evil is not the presence of justice. To stay murder is not the same thing as to ordain brotherhood.
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Nonviolence is not sterile passivity, but a powerful moral force which makes for social transformation.
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We can never travel beyond the arms of the Divine.
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Be sure to play "Blessed Lord" tonight - play it real pretty.
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One day we will learn that the heart can never be totally right when the head is totally wrong.