Martin Luther King, Jr. Quotes

618 Sourced Quotes

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

Martin Luther King, Jr.
Jesus reminds us that the good life combines the toughness of the serpent and the tenderness of the dove. To have serpent-like qualities devoid of dovelike qualities is to be passionless, mean, and selfish. To have dovelike without serpent-like qualities is to be sentimental, anemic and aimless. We must combine strongly marked antitheses.

Martin Luther King, Jr.
I do think there must be centralized leadership in the sense that, say, in our struggle all of the leaders coordinate their efforts, cooperate and, and at least evince a degree of unity.

Martin Luther King, Jr.
Freedom only comes through persistent revolt, through persistent agitation, through persistently rising up against the system of evil.

Martin Luther King, Jr.
Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love. It destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible. It leaves society in monologue rather than dialogue. Violence ends by defeating itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers.

Martin Luther King, Jr.
I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds of energies in rehabilitation of its poor as long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube.

Martin Luther King, Jr.
There may have been a time when war served as a negative good by preventing the spread and growth of an evil force, but the destructive power of modern weapons eliminates even the possibility that war may serve as a negative good.

Martin Luther King, Jr.
Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or the darkness of destructive selfishness. This is the judgment. Life's persistent and most urgent question is 'What are you doing for others?'

Martin Luther King, Jr.
As long as the mind is enslaved the body can never be free. Psychological freedom, a firm sense of self-esteem, is the most powerful weapon against the long night of physical slavery.... The Negro will only be truly free when he reaches down to the inner depths of his own being and signs with the pen and ink of assertive selfhood his own emancipation proclamation.

Martin Luther King, Jr.
Courage faces fear and thereby masters it.
Cowardice represses fear and is thereby mastered by it.

Martin Luther King, Jr.
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?

Martin Luther King, Jr.
Black Power alone is no more insurance against social injustice than white power.

Martin Luther King, Jr.
But alas! Science cannot now rescue us, for even the scientist is lost in the terrible midnight of our age. Indeed, science gave us the very instruments that threaten to bring universal suicide.

Martin Luther King, Jr.
We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

Martin Luther King, Jr.
A time comes when silence is betrayal. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought, within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world.

Martin Luther King, Jr.
God has given each normal person a capacity to achieve some end. True, some are endowed with more talent than others, but God has left none of us talentless.

Martin Luther King, Jr.
The great majority of Americans are suspended between these opposing attitudes. They are uneasy with injustice but unwilling yet to pay a significant price to eradicate it.

Martin Luther King, Jr.
As I like to say to the people in Montgomery: "The tension in this city is not between white people and Negro people. The tension is, at bottom, between justice and injustice, between the forces of light and the forces of darkness.

Martin Luther King, Jr.
Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter—but beautiful— struggle for a new world.

Martin Luther King, Jr.
To have peace in the world, men & nations must embrace the nonviolent assertion that ends and means must cohere.

Martin Luther King, Jr.
For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with a piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant "Never."

Martin Luther King, Jr.
In order to be true to one's conscience and true to God, a righteous man has no alternative but to refuse to cooperate with an evil system.

Martin Luther King, Jr.
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.

Martin Luther King, Jr.
Man was born into barbarism when killing his fellow man was a normal condition of existence. He became endowed with a conscience.
And he has now reached the day when violence toward another human being must become as abhorrent as eating another's flesh.

Martin Luther King, Jr.
Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think.

Martin Luther King, Jr.
Nonviolent action, the Negro saw, was the way to supplement, not replace, the progress of change. It was the way to divest himself of passivity without arraying himself in vindictive force.

Martin Luther King, Jr.
The question is not whether we will be extremist but what kind of extremist we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or will we be extremists for love?

Martin Luther King, Jr.
The Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land.

Martin Luther King, Jr.
We have inherited a large house, a great world house in which we have to live together—black and white, Easterner and Westerner, Gentile and Jew, Catholic and Protestant, Muslim and Hindu— a family unduly separated in ideas, culture, and interest, who, because we can never again live apart, must learn somehow to live with each other in peace.

Martin Luther King, Jr.
If America does not use her vast resources of wealth to end poverty and make it possible for all of God's children to have the basic necessities of life, she too will go to hell.

Martin Luther King, Jr.