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Martin Luther King Jr. Quotes | Quotes said by Martin Luther King Jr.

  • Martin Luther King Jr. Quote #1

    ...The straitjackets of race prejudice and discrimination do not wear only southern labels. The subtle, psychological technique of the North has approached in its ugliness and victimization of the Negro the outright terror and open brutality of the South.

  • Martin Luther King Jr. Quote #2

    [I] know that love is ultimately the only answer to mankind's problems....

  • Martin Luther King Jr. Quote #3

    [If] a man doesn't have a job or an income, he has neither life nor liberty nor the possibility for the pursuit of happiness. He merely exists.

  • Martin Luther King Jr. Quote #4

    [Nonviolence] is directed against forces of evil rather than against persons who happen to be doing the evil. It is evil that the nonviolent resister seeks to defeat, not the persons victimized by evil.

  • Martin Luther King Jr. Quote #5

    A man dies when he refuses to stand up for that which is right.

  • Martin Luther King Jr. Quote #6

    A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on the installment plan.

  • Martin Luther King Jr. Quote #7

    A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.

  • Martin Luther King Jr. Quote #8

    A right delayed is a right denied.

  • Martin Luther King Jr. Quote #9

    A social movement that only moves people is merely a revolt. A movement that changes both people and institutions is a revolution.

  • Martin Luther King Jr. Quote #10

    Admitting the weighty problems and staggering disappointments, Christianity affirms that God is able to give us the power to meet them. He is able to give us inner equilibrium to stand tall amid the trials and burdens of life. He is able to provide inner peace amid our outer storms.

  • Martin Luther King Jr. Quote #11

    All labor has dignity.

  • Martin Luther King Jr. Quote #12

    All my adult life I have deplored violence and war as instruments for achieving solutions to mankind’s problems. I am firmly committed to the creative power of nonviolence as the force which is capable of winning lasting and meaningful brotherhood and peace.

  • Martin Luther King Jr. Quote #13

    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.

  • Martin Luther King Jr. Quote #14

    An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.

  • Martin Luther King Jr. Quote #15

    An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law

  • Martin Luther King Jr. Quote #16

    And one day we must ask the question, Why are there forty million poor people in America? And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy.

  • Martin Luther King Jr. Quote #17

    And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

  • Martin Luther King Jr. Quote #18

    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. Set out to do such a good job that the living, the dead or the unborn couldn’t do it any better. If it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, sweep streets like Beethoven composed music, sweep streets like Leontyne Price sings before the Metropolitan Opera. Sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will have to pause and say: Here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well.

  • Martin Luther King Jr. Quote #19

    As a young man with most of my life ahead of me, I decided early to give my life to something eternal and absolute. Not to these little gods that are here today and gone tomorrow. But to God who is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

  • Martin Luther King Jr. Quote #20

    As my sufferings mounted I soon realized that there were two ways in which I could respond to my situation -- either to react with bitterness or seek to transform the suffering into a creative force. I decided to follow the latter course.

  • Martin Luther King Jr. Quote #21

    At the center of non-violence stands the principle of love

  • Martin Luther King Jr. Quote #22

    At the center of non-violence stands the principle of love.

  • Martin Luther King Jr. Quote #23

    But I am also concerned about our moral uprightness and the health of our souls. Therefore I must oppose any attempt to gain our freedom by the methods of malice, hate, and violence that have characterized our oppressors. Hate is just as injurious to the hater as it is to the hated. Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Many of our inner conflicts are rooted in hate. This is why psychiatrists say, “Love or perish.” Hate is too great a burden to bear.

  • Martin Luther King Jr. Quote #24

    But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough, can you see the stars.

  • Martin Luther King Jr. Quote #25

    But it is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society. These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they have no other alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention. And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the negro poor has worsened over the last twelve or fifteen years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice and humanity.

  • Martin Luther King Jr. Quote #26

    But the judgement of God is upon the church as never before. If today's church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century. Every day I meet young people who disappointments with the church has turned into outright disgust.

  • Martin Luther King Jr. Quote #27

    But today our very survival depends on our ability to stay awake, to adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant and to face the challenge of change. The large house in which we live demands that we transform this world-wide neighborhood into a world – wide brotherhood. Together we must learn to live as brothers or together we will be forced to perish as fools.

    We must work passionately and indefatigably to bridge the gulf between our scientific progress and our moral progress. One of the great problems of mankind is that we suffer from a poverty of the spirit which stands in glaring contrast to our scientific and technological abundance. The richer we have become materially, the poorer we have become morally and spiritually.

  • Martin Luther King Jr. Quote #28

    Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can’t ride you unless your back is bent.

  • Martin Luther King Jr. Quote #29

    Communism forgets that life is individual. Capitalism forgets that life is social, and the kingdom of brotherhood is found neither in the thesis of communism nor the antithesis of capitalism but in a higher synthesis. It is found in a higher synthesis that combines the truths of both.

  • Martin Luther King Jr. Quote #30

    Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.

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