Martin Luther King, Jr. Quotes
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Good and just society is neither the thesis of capitalism nor the antithesis of communism, but a socially conscious democracy which reconciles the truths of individualism and collectivism.
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Look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin.
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You don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.
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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.
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Almost always, the creative dedicated minority has made the world better.
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A piece of freedom is no longer enough for human beings...unlike bread, a slice of liberty does not finish hunger. Freedom is like life. It cannot be had in installments. Freedom is indivisible--we have it all, or we are not free.
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Returning hate for hate multiplies hate.
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President Lyndon Johnson's high spirits were marked as he circulated among the many guests whom he had invited to witness an event he confidently felt to be historic, the signing of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.... The bill that lay on the polished mahogany desk was born in violence in Selma, Alabama, where a stubborn sheriff... had stumbled against the future.
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We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And he's allowed me to go up to the mountaintop. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land.
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Capitalism started out with a noble and high motive, but like most human systems it fell victim to the very thing it was revolting against.
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To be Negro in America is to hope against hope.
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Procrastination is still the thief of time.
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I am thankful, however, that some of our white brothers have grasped the meaning of this social revolution and committed themselves to it. They are still all too small in quantity, but they are big in quality.
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An individual has not begun to live until he can rise above the narrow horizons of his particular individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity. And this is one of the big problems of life, that so many people never quite get to the point of rising above self. And so they end up the tragic victims of self-centeredness. They end up the victims of distorted and disrupted personality.
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The human heart is like a ship on a stormy sea driven about by winds blowing from all four corners of heaven.
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Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man's sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true.
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The whole world must see that Israel must exist and has the right to exist, and is one of the great outposts of democracy in the world.
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Agape is disinterested love. . . . Agape does not begin by discriminating between worthy and unworthy people, or any qualities people possess. It begins by loving others for their sakes. . . . Therefore, agape makes no distinction between friend and enemy; it is directed toward both.
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It is a cruel injustice to tell a bootless man to pull himself up by his bootstraps.
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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.
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Man must never be treated as a means to the end of the state, but always as an end within himself.
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We must concentrate not merely on the negative expulsion of war but the postive affirmation of peace.
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There is something in the soul that cries out for freedom.
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I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.