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A woman can have a smile, and a woman can have a large backside, but I have been to the mountain and I am here to tell you that when a woman has both of those things she is not to be trusted.
Martin Luther King, Jr. -
Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
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I am convinced that...in the struggle for righteousness man has cosmic companionship.
Martin Luther King, Jr. -
Many people in Harlem never go out of Harlem. I mean they'd never even been downtown. And you can see how this bitterness can accumulate. Here you see people crowded and hovered up in ghettos and slums with no hope.They see no way out.
Martin Luther King, Jr. -
Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.
Martin Luther King, Jr. -
You know, my friends, there comes a time when people get tired of being trampled over by the iron feet of oppression. There comes a time, my friends, when people get tired of being plunged across the abyss of humiliation, where they experience the bleakness of nagging despair. There comes a time when people get tired of being pushed out of the glittering sunlight of life’s July and left standing amid the piercing chill of an alpine November.
Martin Luther King, Jr. -
Any religion that professes to be concerned about the souls of men and is not concerned about the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strangle them and the social conditions that cripple them is a spiritually moribund religion awaiting burial.
Martin Luther King, Jr. -
I feel that segregation is totally unchristian, and that it is against everything the Christian religion stands for.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Of course, there is nothing new about this kind of civil disobedience. It was seen sublimely in the refusal of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego to obey the laws of Nebuchadnezzar because a higher moral law was involved. It was practiced superbly by the early Christians who were willing to face hungry lions and the excruciating pain of chopping blocks, before submitting to certain unjust laws of the Roman empire.
Martin Luther King, Jr. -
Never succumb to the temptation of bitterness.
Martin Luther King, Jr. -
I became convinced that noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good.
Martin Luther King, Jr. -
By nonviolent resistance, the Negro can also enlist all men of good will in his struggle for equality.
Martin Luther King, Jr. -
Set yourself earnestly to discover what you are made to do, and then give yourself passionately to the doing of it.
Martin Luther King, Jr. -
My place is in the sunlight of opportunity.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can't ride you unless your back is bent.
Martin Luther King, Jr. -
We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love.
Martin Luther King, Jr. -
I think if we, say, if all of the major leaders in this struggle [for human's rights] were at, at war with each other, then I think it would be very difficult to make this social revolution the kind of powerful revolution that it's proved to be.
Martin Luther King, Jr. -
Unearned suffering is redemptive.
Martin Luther King, Jr. -
Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups are more immoral than individuals.
Martin Luther King, Jr. -
A good many observers have remarked that if equality could come at once, the Negro would not be ready for it. I submit that the white American is even more unprepared.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Like anybody, I would like to have a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will.
Martin Luther King, Jr. -
I just want to do God's will. And he's allowed me to go to the mountain. And I've looked over, and I've seen the promised land! I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land.
Martin Luther King, Jr. -
Your truth will increase as you know listen to the truth of others.
Martin Luther King, Jr. -
Before you finish eating breakfast in the morning, you've depended on more than half of the world.
Martin Luther King, Jr.