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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Why is the church always a taillight rather than a headlight?
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If a man hasn't found anything worth dying for, he hasn't anything worth living for.
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One day we will learn that the heart can never be totally right when the head is totally wrong.
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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.
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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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Now there is a final reason I think that Jesus says, 'Love your enemies.' It is this: that love has within it a redemptive power. And there is a power there that eventually transforms individuals.
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I refuse to accept the idea that man is mere flotsam and jetsam in the river of life, unable to influence the unfolding events which surround him.
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There may be a conflict between softminded religionists and toughminded scientists, but not between science and religion.
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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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And see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky.
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Find a voice in a whisper.
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No one really knows why they are alive until they know what they'd die for.
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Jazz speaks for life. This is triumphant music.
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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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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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Peace is not simply the absence of conflict, but the existence of justice for all people.
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The greatest pain is the pain of a new idea.
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I think there can be a collective leadership. Maybe some symbolize the struggle [for human's rights] a little more than others, but I think it's absolutely necessary for the leadership to be united in order to make the revolution effective.
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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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Be true to what you said on paper.
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But I say to you, my friends, there are certain things in our nation and in the world which I am proud to be maladjusted and which I hope all men of good-will will be maladjusted until the good societies realize.
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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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We can never travel beyond the arms of the Divine.