Martin Luther King, Jr.
Education without morals is like a ship without a compass, merely wandering nowhere.Collection: Ships
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.Collection: Change
I have a dream that one day little black boys and girls will be holding hands with little white boys and girls.Collection: Girl
Normal fear protects us; abnormal fear paralyses us. Normal fear motivates us to improve our individual and collective welfare; abnormal fear constantly poisons and distorts our inner lives. Our problem is not to be rid of fear but, rather to harness and master it.Collection: Poison
There is something in the soul that cries out for freedom.Collection: Soul
The whole world must see that Israel must exist and has the right to exist, and is one of the great outposts of democracy in the world.Collection: Israel
Look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin.Collection: Dream
Mass civil disobedience can use rage as a constructive and creative force.Collection: Creative
Ten thousand fools proclaim themselves into obscurity, while one wise man forgets himself into immortality.Collection: Wise
Without hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the primitive forces of social stagnation. So we must help time and realize that the time is always ripe to do right.Collection: Hard Work
Power at its best is love implementing the demand of justice.Collection: Power
Nothing pains some people more than having to thinkCollection: Pain
It is Love that will save our world and our civilization.Collection: Our World
We have before us the glorious opportunity to inject a new dimension of love into the veins of our civilization.Collection: Love
Education without social action is a one-sided value because it has no true power potential.Collection: True Power
We refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt.Collection: Believe
The words 'I will forgive you, but I'll never forget what you've done' never explain the real nature of forgiveness.Collection: True Love
Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.Collection: March On Washington
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."Collection: Inspirational
Before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth, we were here. Before the pen of Jefferson etched across the pages of history the majestic words of the Declaration of Independence, we were here.Collection: Inspirational
The Negroes of America had taken the President, the press and the pulpit at their word when they spoke in broad terms of freedom and justice. But the absence of brutality and unregenerate evil is not the presence of justice. To stay murder is not the same thing as to ordain brotherhood.Collection: Taken
I just want to do God’s will.Collection: Want
A social movement that only moves people is merely a revolt. A movement that changes both people and institutions is a revolution.Collection: Moving
The belief that God will do everything for man is as untenable as the belief that man can do everything for himself. It, too, is based on a lack of faith. We must learn that to expect God to do everything while we do nothing is not faith but superstition.Collection: Men
It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tired into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one destiny, affects all indirectly.Collection: Tired
Let no man pull you so low as to hate him.Collection: Inspiring
He who is greatest among you shall be a servant. That's the new definition of greatness. ... By giving that definition of greatness, it means that everybody can be great, because everybody can serve.Collection: Mean
We must come to see that the end we seek is a society at peace with itself, a society that can live with its conscience.Collection: Political
Morality cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. Judicial decrees may not change the heart, but they can restrain the heartless.Collection: Heart
This will be the day when we shall bring into full realization the dream of American democracy - a dream yet unfulfilled. A dream of equality of opportunity, of privilege and property widely distributed; a dream of a land where men will not take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few.Collection: Dream
I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be.Collection: Independent
On some positions, cowardice asks the question, is it expedient? And then expedience comes along and asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? Conscience asks the question, is it right? There comes a time when one must take the position that is neither safe nor politic nor popular, but he must do it because conscience tells him it is right.Collection: Life
O America, how you've taken necessities from the masses to give luxuries to the classes.Collection: Taken
There are two types of laws: there are just laws and there are unjust laws... What is the difference between the two?...An unjust law is a man-made code that is out of harmony with the moral law.Collection: Peace
Forgiveness does not mean ignoring what has been done or putting a false label on an evil act. It means, rather, that the evil act no longer remains as a barrier to the relationship. Forgiveness is a catalyst creating the atmosphere necessary for a fresh start and a new beginning.Collection: Forgiveness
Curtailment of free speech is rationalized on grounds that a more compelling American tradition forbids criticism of the government when the nation is at war... Nothing can be more destructive of our fundamental democratic traditions than the vicious effort to silence dissenters.Collection: War
Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality.Collection: Reality
Freedom only comes through persistent revolt, through persistent agitation, through persistently rising up against the system of evil.Collection: Rising Up
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.Collection: America
Don't let anybody make you think that God chose America as his divine, messianic force to be a sort of policeman of the whole world.Collection: Thinking
Hatred darkens life; love illumines it.Collection: Life
Voting is the foundation stone for political action.Collection: Political
The Christian faith makes it possible for us nobly to accept that which cannot be changed, and to meet disappointments and sorrow with an inner poise, and to absorb the most intense pain without abandoning our sense of hope.Collection: Christian
Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men. Our hope for creative living lies in our ability to reestablish the spiritual needs of our lives in personal character and social justice. Without this spiritual and moral reawakening we shall destroy ourselves in the misuse of our own instruments.Collection: Spiritual
When we ask Negroes to abide by the law, let us also declare that the white man does not abide by law in the ghettos. Day in and day out he violates welfare laws to deprive the poor of their meager allotments; he flagrantly violates building codes and regulations; his police make a mockery of law; he violates laws on equal employment and education and the provisions of civil services. The slums are the handiwork of a vicious system of the white society; Negroes live in them, but they do not make them, any more than a prisoner makes a prison.Collection: Ghetto
The method of nonviolence seeks not to humiliate and not to defeat the oppressor, but it seeks to win his friendship and his understanding. And thereby and therefore the aftermath of this method is reconciliation.Collection: Winning
The thing that we need in the world today, is a group of men and women who will stand up for right and be opposed to wrong, wherever it is. A group of people who have come to see that some things are wrong, whether they’re never caught up with. Some things are right, whether nobody sees you doing them or not.Collection: Change
When we see social relationships controlled everywhere by the principles which Jesus illustrated in life -- trust, love, mercy, and altruism -- then we shall know that the kingdom of God is here.Collection: Jesus
The Christians who engaged in infamous persecutions and shameful inquisitions were not evil men but misguided men. The churchmen who felt they had an edict from God to withstand the progress of science, whether in the form of a Copernican revolution or a Darwinian theory of natural selection, were not mischievous men but misinformed men. And so Christ's words from the cross are written in sharp-edged terms across some of the most inexpressible tragedies of history: 'They know not what they do'.Collection: Christian