Martin Luther King, Jr. Quotes
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
If you haven't found something worth dying for, you're not fit to live.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Jazz speaks for life. This is triumphant music.
-
Life isn't worth living until you have found something worth dying for.
-
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.
-
Love is the only creative, redemptive, transforming power, in the universe.
-
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.
-
Lord help me to see M. L. King as M. L. King in his true perspective.
-
No one really knows why they are alive until they know what they'd die for.
-
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.
-
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.
-
It seems to me that education has a two-fold function to perform in the life of man and in society: the one is utility and the other is culture. Education must enable a man to become more efficient, to achieve with increasing facility the ligitimate goals of his life.
-
Nonviolence is not sterile passivity, but a powerful moral force which makes for social transformation.
-
An eye for an eye leaves everybody blind.
-
Violence is not the way.
-
One day we will learn that the heart can never be totally right when the head is totally wrong.
-
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.
-
We can never travel beyond the arms of the Divine.
-
It is Love that will save our world and our civilization.