Martin Luther King, Jr. - Strength to Love (1963)

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Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

Martin Luther King, Jr.
The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy. The true neighbor will risk his position, his prestige and even his life for the welfare of others.

Martin Luther King, Jr.
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.

Martin Luther King, Jr.
True sympathy is the personal concern which demands the giving of one's soul.

Martin Luther King, Jr.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.

Martin Luther King, Jr.
If you want to be important-wonderful. If you want to be recognized-wonderful. If you want to be great-wonderful. But recognize that he who is greatest among you shall be your servant. That's a new definition of greatness.

Martin Luther King, Jr.
Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend.

Martin Luther King, Jr.
Without God, all of our efforts turn to ashes and our sunrise into the darkest of nights.

Martin Luther King, Jr.
If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as a Michaelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, 'Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.

Martin Luther King, Jr.
Forgiveness is not an occasional act. It is a permanent attitude. That which I was not but could have been. That which I would have done but did not do. Can I find the fortitude to remember in truth, to understand, to submit, to forgive and to be free to move on in time?

Martin Luther King, Jr.
Moral principles have lost their distinctiveness. For modern man, absolute right and absolute wrong are a matter of what the majority is doing.

Martin Luther King, Jr.
The end of life is not to be happy, nor to achieve pleasure and avoid pain, but to do the will of God, come what may.

Martin Luther King, Jr.
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.

Martin Luther King, Jr.
The meaning of this story is not found in the drowning of the Egyptian soldiers, for no one should rejoice at the death or defeat of a human being. Rather, this story symbolizes the death of evil and of inhuman oppression and unjust exploitation.

Martin Luther King, Jr.
The strong man holds in a living blend strongly marked opposites. The idealists are usually not realistic, and the realists are not usually idealistic. The militant are not generally known to be passive, nor the passive to be militant. Seldom are the humble self-assertive, or the self-assertive humble. But life at its best is a creative synthesis of opposites in fruitful harmony. The philosopher Hegel said that truth is found neither in the thesis nor the antithesis, but in the emergent synthesis which reconciles the two.

Martin Luther King, Jr.
The good neighbor looks beyond the external accidents and discerns those inner qualities that make all men human and, therefore, brothers.

Martin Luther King, Jr.
The Christian gospel is a two-way road. On the one hand, it seeks to change the souls of men, and thereby unite them with God; on the other hand, it seeks to change the environmental conditions of men so the soul will have a chance after it is changed.

Martin Luther King, Jr.
To have serpentlike qualities devoid of dovelike qualities is to be passionless, mean, and selfish.

Martin Luther King, Jr.
We must learn that passively to accept an unjust system is to cooperate with that system, and thereby to become a participant in its evil.

Martin Luther King, Jr.
The more I thought about human nature, the more I saw how our tragic inclination for sin/mistakes causes us to use our minds to rationalize our action.

Martin Luther King, Jr.
In his essay "Self-Reliance" Emerson wrote, "Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist." The Apostle Paul reminds us that whoso would be a Christian must also be a a nonconformist. Any Christian who blindly accepts the opinions of the majority and in fear and timidity follows a path of expediency and social approval is a mental and spiritual slave.

Martin Luther King, Jr.
The greatness of our God lies in the fact that He is both toughminded and tenderhearted.

Martin Luther King, Jr.
We need not join the mad rush to purchase an earthly fallout shelter. God is our eternal fallout shelter.

Martin Luther King, Jr.
The ultimate solution to the race problem lies in the willingness of men to obey the unenforceable.

Martin Luther King, Jr.
The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.

Martin Luther King, Jr.