Martin Luther King, Jr.
Somehow we must transform the dynamics of the world power struggle from the negative nuclear arms race which no one can win to a positive contest to harness man's creative genius for the purpose of making peace and prosperity a reality for all of the nations of the world.Collection: Peace
Courage faces fear and thereby masters itCollection: Inspirational
It’s wrong to hate. It always has been wrong and it always will be wrong! It’s wrong in America, it’s wrong in Germany, it’s wrong in Russia, it’s wrong in China! It was wrong in two thousand B.C., and it’s wrong in nineteen fifty-four A.D.! It always has been wrong, and it always will be wrong!Collection: Hate
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: Inspirational
I will always remember my delight when Mrs. Georgia Gilmore - an unlettered woman of unusual intelligence - told how an operator demanded that she get off the bus after paying her fare and board it again by the back door, and then drove away before she could get there. She turned to Judge Carter and said: "When they count the money, they do not know Negro money from white money.Collection: White
My obligation is to do the right thing. The rest is in God's hands.Collection: Hands
The beauty of genuine brotherhood and peace is more precious than diamonds or silver or gold.Collection: Brotherhood
The more there are riots, the more repressive actin will take place, and the more we face the danger of a right-wing takeover and eventually a fascist society.Collection: Wings
To accept injustice or segregation passively is to say to the oppressor that his actions are morally right.Collection: Inspirational
A society is always eager to cover misdeeds with a cloak of forgetfulness, but no society can fully repress an ugly past when the ravages persist into the present. America owes a debt of justice which it has only begun to pay.Collection: Past
In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men - yes, black men as well as white men - would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness... America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked 'insufficient funds.'Collection: Fall
I would urge you to give priority to the search for God. Allow his spirit to permeate your being. ... If you do not have a deep and patient faith in God, you will be powerless to face the delays, disappointments, and vicissitudes that inevitably come.Collection: Disappointment
Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time: the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence. Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.Collection: Peace
We need to recapture the gospel glow of the early Christians who were nonconformists in the truest sense of the word . . . Their powerful gospel put an end to such barbaric evils as infanticide and bloody gladiatorial contests. Finally, they captured the Roman Empire for Jesus Christ.Collection: Christian
Lukewarm acceptance is more bewildering than outright rejection.Collection: Inspirational
Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups are more immoral than individuals.Collection: Inspirational
If we get setbacks and if something happens where the Civil Rights Bill is watered down, for instance, if the Negro feels that he can do nothing but move from one ghetto to another and one slum to another, the despair and the disappointment will be so great that it will be very difficult to keep the struggle disciplined and nonviolent.Collection: Disappointment
The unemployed, poverty-stricken white man must be made to realize that he is in the very same boat with the Negro. Together, they could exert massive pressure on the government to get jobs for all. Together, they could form a grand alliance. Together, they could merge all people for the good of all.Collection: Jobs
I'm concerned about justice. I'm concerned about brotherhood. I'm concerned about truth. And when one is concerned about these, he can never advocate violence.Collection: Justice
We all have the drum major instinct. We all want to be important, to surpass others, to achieve distinction, to lead the parade.Collection: Important
With the tough mind, there must also be a tender heart.Collection: Heart
The church must be the critic and guide of the state, and never its tool.Collection: Church
Be sure to play "Blessed Lord" tonight - play it real pretty.Collection: Real
The body is God's temple, but we are to worship God, not the temple.Collection: Body
The holy passion of friendship is of so sweet and steady and loyal and enduring a nature that it will last through a whole lifetime, if not asked to lend money In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friendsCollection: Sweet
In the event of a violent revolution, we would be sorely outnumbered. And when it was all over, the Negro would face the same unchanged conditions, the same squalor and deprivation-the only difference being that his bitterness would be even more intense, his disenchantment even more abject. Thus, in purely practical as well as moral terms, the American Negro has no rational alternative to nonviolence.Collection: Differences
I have an ultimate faith in America and an audacious faith in mankind.Collection: America
Today, is a great day to make a difference for someone. 'I have a dream'.Collection: Dream
If I knew that the world ends tomorrow, I, even today, plant a treeCollection: Tree
Our generation will not have regretted both perverse crimes, and the eerie silence of the kindCollection: Our Generation
I would suffer all the humiliation, all the torture, the absolute ostracism and even death, to prevent violenceCollection: Suffering
A man does not measure its height in moments of comfort, but in terms of change and controversyCollection: Men
From my Christian formation've gotten my ideals and technique Gandhi actionCollection: Christian
I think that we must face the fact that in reality, you cannot have economic and political equality without having some form of social equality. I think this is inevitable.Collection: Reality
Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for a new world. This is the calling of the sons of God, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response. Shall we say the odds are too great? Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard?Collection: Beautiful
While the question of who killed President Kennedy is important, the question 'what killed him' is more important.Collection: Important
People are often led to causes and often become committed to great ideas through persons who personify those ideas. They have to find the embodiment of the idea in flesh and blood in order to commit themselves to it.Collection: Blood
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.Collection: Hate
In that dramatic scene on Calvary's hill three men were crucified.... All three were crucified for the same crime-the crime of extremism. Two were extremists for immorality, and thus fell below their environment. The other, Jesus Christ, was an extremist for love, truth and goodness, and thereby rose above his environment. Perhaps the South, the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.Collection: Jesus
Within the best of us, there is some evil, and within the worst of us, there is some good. When we come to see this, we take a different attitude toward individuals.Collection: Attitude
We have a great dream. It started way back in 1776, and God grant that America will be true to her dream.Collection: Dream
Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral. It is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding; it seeks to annihilate rather than to convert. Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love.Collection: Love
We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for the victims of our nation and for those it calls enemy, for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers and sisters.Collection: Brother
Without love, there is no reason to know anyone, for love will in the end connect us to our neighbors, our children and our hearts.Collection: Children
Every genuine expression of love grows out of a consistent and total surrender to God.Collection: Love
Jesus is not an impractical idealist; he is the practical realist.Collection: Jesus
We must face the appalling fact that we have been betrayed by both the Democratic and Republican Parties.Collection: Party
Agape is disinterested love. . . . Agape does not begin by discriminating between worthy and unworthy people, or any qualities people possess. It begins by loving others for their sakes. . . . Therefore, agape makes no distinction between friend and enemy; it is directed toward both.Collection: Faith
Ten cures for depression are to go out and do something for someone else and repeat it nine times.Collection: Nine