Martin Luther King, Jr. Quotes

After we've discovered what God called us to do, after we've discovered our life's work, we should set out to do that work so well that the living, the dead, or the unborn couldn't do it any better.

If I lived in a Communist country today where certain principles dear to the Christian faith are suppressed, I believe I would openly advocate disobeying these anti-religious laws.

Those of us who love peace must organize as effectively as the war hawks. As they spread the propaganda of war, we must spread the propaganda of peace.

Alienation is a form of living death. It is the acid of despair that dissolves society.

Unconditional love will have the final word in reality.

We refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt.

Every minority and every people has its share of opportunists, profiteers, freeloaders and escapists. The hammer blows of discrimination, poverty and segregation must warp and corrupt some. No one can pretend that because a people may be oppressed, every individual member is virtuous and worthy. The real issue is whether in the great mass the dominant characteristics are decency, honor and courage.

We in the West must bear in mind that the poor countries are poor primarily because we have exploited them through political or economic colonialism.

Mass civil disobedience can use rage as a constructive and creative force.

There are those who write history. There are those who make history. There are those who experience history.

At this level, we love men not because we like them, nor because their ways appeal to us, nor even because they possess some type of divine spark; we love every man because God loves him. At this level, we love the person who does an evil deed, although we hate the deed he does.

If you haven't found something you're willing to die for, than you don't deserve to live

The means by which we live have outdistanced the ends for which we live.

It is not a sign of weakness, but a sign of high maturity, to rise to the level of self-criticism.

Through our scientific and technological genius we've made of this world a neighborhood. And now through our moral and ethical commitment we must make of it a brotherhood. We must all learn to live together as brothers - or we will all perish together as fools.

I was much more afraid in Montgomery when I had a gun in my house. When I decided that I couldn't keep a gun, I came face-to-face with the question of death and I dealt with it. From that point on, I no longer needed a gun nor have I been afraid. Had we become distracted by the question of my safety we would have lost the moral offensive and sunk to the level of our oppressors.

Lightning makes no sound until it strikes.

We can never travel beyond the arms of the Divine.

Whites, it must frankly be said, are not putting in a similar mass effort to reeducate themselves out of their racial ignorance.

It is better to be the recipient of violence than the inflicter of it, since the latter only multiplies the existence of violence and bitterness in the universe, while the former may develop a sense of shame in the opponent, and thereby bring about a transformation and change of heart.

We can either walk the highroad of brotherhood or the low road of man's inhumanity to man.

What matters is not how long you live…but how you live.

My mommy always said there were no monsters - no real ones - but there are.

Three simple words can describe the nature of the social revolution that is talking place and what Negroes really want. They are the words "all," "now," and "here."

One who condones evils is just as guilty as the one who perpetrates it.

The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.

The Cross is the eternal expression of the length to which God will go to in order to restore broken community.

Forgiveness does not mean ignoring what has been done or putting a false label on an evil act. It means, rather, that the evil act no longer remains as a barrier to the relationship. Forgiveness is a catalyst creating the atmosphere necessary for a fresh start and a new beginning.

Look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, ...

There is no gain without struggle.

God made the world from nothing, and if we can be nothing, then God can make something of us.

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. Just keep being friendly to that person. Just keep loving them, and they can't stand it too long. Oh, they react in many ways in the beginning. They react with guilt feelings, and sometimes they'll hate you a little more at that transition period, but just keep loving them. And by the power of your love they will break down under the load. That's love, you see. It is redemptive, and this is why Jesus says love. 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. (from "Loving Your Enemies")

The only weapon that we have in our hands this evening is the weapon of protest. That's all.

The white poor also suffer deprivation and the humiliation of poverty if not of color. They are chained by the weight of discrimination though its badge of degradation does not mark them. It corrupts their lives, frustrates their opportunities and withers their education. In one sense it is more evil for them because it has confused so many by prejudice that they have supported their own oppressors.

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.

We aren't going to let any mace stop us. We are masters in our nonviolent movement in disarming police forces; they don't know what to do.

The great issue of life is to harness the drum major instinct.

We can all get more together than we can apart. And this is the way we gain power. Power is the ability to achieve purpose, power is the ability to effect change, and we need power.

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.

The question was not whether one should use his gun when his home was attacked, but whether it was tactically wise to use a gun while participating in an organized demonstration. If they lowered the banner of nonviolence, I said, Mississippi injustice would not be exposed and the moral issues would be obscured.

If the church of today does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authentic ring, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century.

Through violence you may murder the hater, but you cannot murder hate.

This is the glory of our religion: that when man decides to rise up from his mistakes, from his sin, from his evil, there is a loving God saying, Come home, I still love you.

I am indebted to my wife Coretta, without whose love, sacrifices, and loyalty neither life nor work would bring fulfillment. She has given me words of consolation when I needed them and a well-ordered home where #Christian love is a reality.

When religion becomes so involved in a future good "over yonder" that it forgets the present evils over here it is as dry as dust religion and needs to be condemned.

A law is unjust if it is inflicted on a minority that, as a result of being denied the right to vote, had no part in enacting or devising the law. Who can say that the legislature of Alabama which set up the state's segregation laws was democratically elected?

There is nothing new about poverty. What is new, however, is that we have the resources to get rid of it.

Curtailment of free speech is rationalized on grounds that a more compelling American tradition forbids criticism of the government when the nation is at war ... Nothing can be more destructive of our fundamental democratic traditions than the vicious effort to silence dissenters.

Science investigates; religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge, which is power; religion gives man wisdom, which is control. Science deals mainly with facts; religion deals mainly with values. The two are not rivals.

Without denying the value of scientific endeavor, there is a striking absurdity in committing billions to reach the moon where no people live, while only a fraction of that amount is appropriated to service the densely populated slums.

And when you discover what you will be in your life, set out to do it as if God Almighty called you at this particular moment in history to do it. Don't just set out to do a good job.

On the one hand we are called to play the good Samaritan on life's roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.
"A Time to Break Silence," at Riverside Church

Where evil men would seek to perpetuate
an unjust status quo,
good men must seek to bring into being
a real order of justice.

We can dream of an America, and a world, in which love and not money are civilization's bottom line.

Will we march only to the music of time, or will we, risking criticism and abuse, march to the soul-saving music of eternity?

What good does it do to sit at the counter when you cannot afford a hamburger?

We must see the great distinction between a reform movement and a revolutionary movement. We are called upon to raise certain basic questions about the whole society ... What America must be told today is that she must be born again. The whole structure of American life must be changed.

Almost always the creative, dedicated minority has made the world better.

Jazz speaks for life. The Blues tell the story of life's difficulties.

A host of positive psychological changes inevitably will result from widespread economic security. The dignity of the individual will flourish when the decisions concerning his life are in his own hands, when he has the means to seek self-improvement. Personal conflicts among husbands, wives and children will diminish when the unjust measurement of human worth on the scale of dollars is eliminated.

The idea of a superior or inferior race is a myth that has been completely refuted by anthropological evidence.

Life's most persistent and urgent question is, 'What are you doing for others?'

The non-violent resistor not only avoids external, physical violence, but he avoids internal violence of spirit. He not only refuses to shoot his opponent, but he refuses to hate him. And he stands with understanding, goodwill at all times.

Nonviolence is a powerful as well as a just weapon. If you confront a man who has long been cruelly misusing you, and say, "Punish me, if you will; I do not deserve it, but I will accept it, so that the world will know I am right and you are wrong," then you wield a powerful and a just weapon. This man, your oppressor, is automatically morally defeated, and if he has any conscience, he is ashamed.

Not only will we have to repent for the sins of bad people; but we also will have to repent for the appalling silence of good people.

Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal.

To be Negro in America is to hope against hope.

The principle of nonviolent resistance seeks to reconcile the truths of two opposites-Acquiescence and violence -while avoiding the extremes and immoralities of both.

There is nothing but a lack of social vision to prevent us from paying an adequate wage to every American citizen whether he be a hospital worker, laundry worker, maid or day laborer

There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right.

It's all right to tell a man to lift himself by his own bootstraps, but it is cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps.

It is always the right time to do the right thing.

As he continued, one could see obvious disappointment on the faces of the white committee members. By trying to convince the Negroes that I was the main obstacle to a solution they had hoped to divide us among ourselves. But Ralph's statement left no doubt. From this moment on the white group saw the futility of attempting to negotiate us into a compromise.

The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.

I cannot make myself believe that God wanted me to hate. I'm tired of violence, I've seen too much of it. I've seen such hate on the faces of too many sheriffs in the South. And I'm not going to let my oppressor dictate to me what method I must use. Our oppressors have used violence. Our oppressors have used hatred. Our oppressors have used rifles and guns. I'm not going to stoop down to their level. I want to rise to a higher level. We have a power that can't be found in Molotov cocktails.

The softminded person always wants to freeze the moment and hold life in the gripping yoke of sameness.

The plain, inexorable fact was that any attempt of the America Negro to overthrow his oppressor with violence would not work ... The courageous efforts of our own insurrectionist brothers, such as Denmark Vassey and Nat Turner, should be eternal reminders to us that a violent rebellion is doomed from the start. Anyone leading a violent rebellion must be willing to make an honest assessment regarding the possible casualties to a minority population confronting a well-armed, wealthy majority with a fanatical right wing that would delight in exterminating thousands of black men, women, and children.

There are two types of laws: there are just laws and there are unjust laws ... What is the difference between the two? ... An unjust law is a man-made code that is out of harmony with the moral law.

The decision we must make now is whether we will give our allegiance to outmoded and unjust customs or to the ethical demands of the universe. As Christians we owe our allegiance to God and His will, rather than to man and his folkways

We need not join the mad rush to purchase an earthly fallout shelter. God is our eternal fallout shelter. From Strength to Love, 1963

All this is simply to say that all life is interrelated. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality; tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. As long as there is poverty in this world, no man can be totally rich even if he has a billion dollars. As long as diseases are rampant and millions of people cannot expect to live more than twenty or thirty years, no man can be totally healthy, even if he just got a clean bill of health from the finest clinic in America. Strangely enough, I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. You can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be.

With all of its false assumptions and evil methods, communism grew as a protest against the hardships of the underprivileged. Communism in theory emphasized a classless society, and a concern for social justice, though the world knows from sad experience that in practice it created new classes and a new lexicon of injustice.

A second way that oppressed people sometimes deal with oppression is to resort to physical violence and corroding hatred.

Courage is the power of the mind to overcome fear.

I guess one of the great agonies of life is that we are constantly trying to finish that which is unfinishable

It was the Sermon on the Mount, rather than a doctrine of passive resistance, that initially inspired the Negroes of Montgomery to dignified social action. It was Jesus of Nazareth that stirred the Negroes to protest with the creative weapon of love. As

It is a tragic mix-up when the United States spends 500,000 for every enemy soldier killed, and only 53 annually on the victims of poverty.

There is something in this universe that justifies the biblical writer in saying, "You shall reap what you sow." This is a law-abiding universe. This is a moral universe. It hinges on moral foundations. If we are to make of this a better world, we've got to go back and rediscover that precious value that we've left behind.

There are often multiple sources for some famous statements by King; as a professional speaker and minister he used some significant phrases with only slight variation many times in his
essays, books, and his speeches to different audiences.

It is precisely this collision of immoral power with powerless morality which constitutes the major crisis of our times.

Put yourself in a state of mind where you say to yourself, 'Here is an opportunity for me to celebrate like never before, my own power, my own ability to get myself to do whatever is necessary.

The failures of the past must not be an excuse for the inaction of the present and the future.

Nonviolent coercion always brings tension to the surface. This tension, however, must not be seen as destructive. There is a kind of tension that is both healthy and necessary for growth. Society needs nonviolent gadflies to bring its tensions into the open and force its citizens to confront the ugliness of their prejudices and the tragedy of their racism.

It is important for the liberal to see that the oppressed person who agitates for his rights is not the creator of tension....How strange it would be to condemn a physician who, through persistent work and the ingenuity of his medical skills, discovered cancer in a patient. Would anyone be so ignorant as to say he caused the cancer? Through the skills and discipline of direct action we reveal that there is a dangerous cancer of hatred and racism in our society. We did not cause the cancer; we merely exposed it. Only through this kind of exposure will the cancer be cured.

Education without direction is a one-sided social value. Direct action without education is a meaningless expression of pure energy.

Intelligence plus character is the true meaning of education.

Human progress never rolls in on the wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be coworkers with God.

Through nonviolent resistance the Negro will be able to rise to the noble height of opposing the unjust system while loving the perpetrators of the system.

The human heart is like a ship on a stormy sea driven about by winds blowing from all four corners of heaven.

Education must enable a man to become more efficient, to achieve with increasing facility the legitimate goals of his life.

Jesus Christ was an extremist for love, truth and goodness.