Martin Luther King, Jr.
We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.Collection: Power
That old law about 'an eye for an eye' leaves everybody blind. The time is always right to do the right thing.Collection: Wisdom
I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality... I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.Collection: Love
It is not enough to say we must not wage war. It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it.Collection: Love
The time is always right to do what is right.Collection: Time
The hope of a secure and livable world lies with disciplined nonconformists who are dedicated to justice, peace and brotherhood.Collection: Hope
The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was: 'If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?' But... the good Samaritan reversed the question: 'If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?'Collection: Good
In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.Collection: Memorial
Pity may represent little more than the impersonal concern which prompts the mailing of a check, but true sympathy is the personal concern which demands the giving of one's soul.Collection: Sympathy
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.Collection: Forgiveness
Every man lives in two realms: the internal and the external. The internal is that realm of spiritual ends expressed in art, literature, morals, and religion. The external is that complex of devices, techniques, mechanisms, and instrumentalities by means of which we live.Collection: Religion
Faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the whole staircase.Collection: Faith
A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.Collection: Leadership
All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.Collection: Work
Whatever your life's work is, do it well. A man should do his job so well that the living, the dead, and the unborn could do it no better.Collection: Work
If physical death is the price that I must pay to free my white brothers and sisters from a permanent death of the spirit, then nothing can be more redemptive.Collection: Death
Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.Collection: Love
Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral. I am not unmindful of the fact that violence often brings about momentary results. Nations have frequently won their independence in battle. But in spite of temporary victories, violence never brings permanent peace.Collection: Peace
The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.Collection: Good
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.Collection: Brainy
If a man has not discovered something that he will die for, he isn't fit to live.Collection: Death
Science investigates; religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge which is power; religion gives man wisdom which is control.Collection: Wisdom
Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.Collection: Good
Any religion that professes to be concerned about the souls of men and is not concerned about the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strangle them and the social conditions that cripple them is a spiritually moribund religion awaiting burial.Collection: Religion
The art of acceptance is the art of making someone who has just done you a small favor wish that he might have done you a greater one.Collection: Art
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit together at the table of brotherhood.Collection: Equality
The sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality.Collection: Equality
Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal.Collection: Peace
Everything that we see is a shadow cast by that which we do not see.Collection: Brainy
I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.Collection: Love
Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.Collection: Science
I am not interested in power for power's sake, but I'm interested in power that is moral, that is right and that is good.Collection: Power
Cowardice asks the question, is it safe? Expediency asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? But conscience asks the question, is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because it is right.Collection: Time
War is a poor chisel to carve out tomorrow.Collection: War
Capitalism does not permit an even flow of economic resources. With this system, a small privileged few are rich beyond conscience, and almost all others are doomed to be poor at some level. That's the way the system works. And since we know that the system will not change the rules, we are going to have to change the system.Collection: Change
We must use time creatively.Collection: Time
History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.Collection: History
Property is intended to serve life, and no matter how much we surround it with rights and respect, it has no personal being. It is part of the earth man walks on. It is not man.Collection: Respect
I submit that 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 law.Collection: Legal
Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal.Collection: Legal
There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love.Collection: Love
The quality, not the longevity, of one's life is what is important.Collection: Life
Discrimination is a hellhound that gnaws at Negroes in every waking moment of their lives to remind them that the lie of their inferiority is accepted as truth in the society dominating them.Collection: Truth
We must build dikes of courage to hold back the flood of fear.Collection: Fear
A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on the installment plan.Collection: Death
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.Collection: Equality
There comes a time when people get tired of being pushed out of the glittering sunlight of life's July and left standing amid the piercing chill of an alpine November.Collection: Time
We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.Collection: Hope
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.Collection: Work
Wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.Collection: War