Mlk Martin Luther King Quotes

We knew no one man had killed the prophet. Rather, the combined weight of racism and an absence of moral courage had crushed him. A constitution ignored, laws denied, these were the weapons. America pulled the trigger. ~ Marita Golden

It is no wonder that so much of the search for identity, among American Negroes, was championed by jazz musicians. Long before the modern essayists and scholars wrote of racial identity as a problem for a multiracial world, musicians were returning to their roots to affirm that which was stirring within their souls. Much of the power of our Freedom Movement in the United States has come from the music. It has strengthened us with its sweet rhythms when courage began to fail. It has calmed us with its rich harmonies when spirits were down. And now, Jazz is exported to the world. For, in a particular struggle of the Negro in America, there is something akin to the universal struggle of modern man. Everybody has
the Blues. Everybody longs for meaning. Everybody
needs to clap hands and be happy. Everybody longs for faith. In music, especially this broad category called jazz, there is a stepping-stone towards all these. ~ Martin Luther King Jr.

In 1999, I was in St. Louis with Martin Luther King III as we led protests against the state's failure to hire minority contractors for highway construction projects. We went at dawn on a summer day with over a thousand people and performed acts of civil disobedience. ~ Al Sharpton

Jazz speaks for life. The Blues tell the story of life's difficulties. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

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. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

It's a racist narrative trick we always do when we talk about Christianity in America. When we say "Christian" we mean white people. When we talk about great Evangelists in American history, we mean Billy Graham, not Martin Luther King. King is a black activist. But Graham is allowed to be for all. This is the narrative trick being pulled when people tell me to disregard Chicago. It's the erasure of othering. As if centuries of struggling together and against one another hasn't left us all deeply and irrevocably changed.

Chicago's story, like the story of St. Louis, Minneapolis, and Iowa City, is a Midwestern story. The story of the black Evangelical church is the story of the Evangelical church. These stories might not fit the narrative we want to tell about ourselves, but they are as essential to the meaning of who we are as any other story. ~ Lyz Lenz

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. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

I'm very glad Christ tells us to love our neighbor and not to like our neighbor because it's hard to like someone threatening your children and throwing fire bombs through your window, but He asks us to love them and that I can do ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Today we know with certainty that segregation is dead. The only question remaining is how costly will be the funeral. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Are you able to accept blows without retaliating?" and "Are you able to endure the ordeals of jail?" ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Education without social action is a one-sided value because it has no true power potential. Social action without education is a weak expression of pure energy. Deeds uninformed by educated thought can take false directions. When we go into action and confront our adversaries, we must be as armed with knowledge as they. Our policies should have the strength of deep analysis beneath them to be able to challenge the clever sophistries of our opponents. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

I'm taking one for the team,
Like Martin Luther King,
taking one for a dream ~ Method Man

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. ~ Martin Luther King Jr.

If your opponent has a conscience, then follow Gandhi and nonviolence. But if your enemy has no conscience like Hitler, then follow Bonhoeffer. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

I still believe that standing up for the truth of God is the greatest thing in the world. This is the end (purpose) of life. The end of life is not to be happy. The end of life is not to achieve pleasure and avoid pain. The end of life is to do the will of God, come what may. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Economic insecurity strangles the physical and cultural growth of its victims. Not only are millions deprived of formal education and proper health facilities but our most fundamental social unit - the family - is tortured, corrupted, and weakened by economic insufficiency. When a Negro man is inadequately paid, his wife must work to provide the simple necessities for the children. When a mother has to work she does violence to motherhood by depriving her children of her loving guidance and protection; often they are poorly cared for by others or by none - left to roam the streets unsupervised. It is not the Negro alone who is wronged by a disrupted society; many white families are in similar straits. The Negro mother leaves home to care for - and be a substitute mother for - white children, while the white mother works. In this strange irony lies the promise of future correction. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Cowardice is submissive surrender to circumstances. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Capital punishment is against the best judgment of modern criminology and, above all, against the highest expression of love in the nature of God. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every tenement and every hamlet, from every state and every city. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

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. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

The job of the school is to teach so well that family background is no longer an issue. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Let no one drag you so low as to hate them"
-Martin Luther King Jr. ~ Elle Jefferson

I'm not Martin Luther King. I can't be Martin Luther King. The only thing I can do is present what I feel the essence of Martin Luther King is. ~ Anthony Mackie

We are out to defeat injustice and not white persons who may be unjust. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

The bombs in Vietnam explode at home; they destroy the hopes and possibilities for a decent America. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Use me, God. Show me how to take who I am, who I want to be, and what I can do, and use it for a purpose greater than myself. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

It all boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Capitalism is always in danger of inspiring men to be more concerned about making a living than making a life. We are prone to judge success by the index of our salaries or the size of our automobiles, rather than by the quality of our service and relationship to humanity. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

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. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

We are faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words 'Too Late'. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

The legacy of [Martin Luther] King is the very thing that must be expanded if America is to be free and democratic in the 21st century. It's just as simple as that. ~ Cornel West

We must either learn to live together as brothers, or we are going to die together as fools. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

If there is to be peace on earth and good will toward men, we must finally believe in the ultimate morality of the universe, and believe that all reality hinges on moral foundations. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.