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Martin Luther King Jr.

457 quotes

“This faith can give us courage to face the uncertainties of the future. It will give our tired feet new strength as we continue our forward stride toward the city of freedom. When our days become dreary with low-hovering clouds and our nights become darker than a thousand midnights, we will know that we are living in the creative turmoil of a genuine civilization struggling to be born.”
Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I think Alfred Nobel would know what I mean when I say that I accept this award in the spirit of a curator of some precious heirloom which he holds in trust for its true owners — all those to whom beauty is truth and truth beauty — and in whose eyes the beauty of genuine brotherhood and peace is more precious than diamonds or silver or gold.”
Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is a sort of 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. We have learned to fly the air like birds and swim the sea like fish, but we have not learned the simple art of living together as brothers.”
Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself.”
Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon. Indeed, it is a weapon unique in history, which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it. I believe in this method because I think it is the only way to reestablish a broken community. It is the method which seeks to implement the just law by appealing to the conscience of the great decent majority who through blindness, fear, pride, and irrationality have allowed their consciences to sleep.”
Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In the final analysis, the rich must not ignore the poor because both rich and poor are tied in a single garment of destiny. All life is interrelated, and all men are interdependent. The agony of the poor diminishes the rich, and the salvation of the poor enlarges the rich. We are inevitably our brothers' keeper because of the interrelated structure of reality.”
Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The fact that most of the time human beings put the truth about the nature and risks of the nuclear war out of their minds because it is too painful and therefore not "acceptable", does not alter the nature and risks of such war. The device of "rejection" may temporarily cover up anxiety, but it does not bestow peace of mind and emotional security.”
Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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. In short, we must shift the arms race into a "peace race". If we have the will and determination to mount such a peace offensive, we will unlock hitherto tightly sealed doors of hope and transform our imminent cosmic elegy into a psalm of creative fulfillment.”
Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As Arnold Toynbee says: "Love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice of life and good against the damning choice of death and evil. Therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word." We can no longer afford to worship the God of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. Love is the key to the solution of the problems of the world.”
Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I'm more convinced than ever before that violence can not solve the problems of the world. Violence is both impractical and immoral. This is why I've tried in my little way to teach it in our struggle for racial justice that I've come to see and I believe with all my heart that we can not make the great moral contribution to our nation that we should make, and we can not win the battle for justice if we stoop to the point of using violence in our struggle.”
Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We've been in the mountain of war. We've been in the mountain of violence. We've been in the mountain of hatred long enough. It is necessary to move on now, but only by moving out of this mountain can we move to the promised land of justice and brotherhood and the Kingdom of God. It all boils down to the fact that we must never allow ourselves to become satisfied with unattained goals. We must always maintain a kind of divine discontent.”
Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If physical death is the price that some must pay to free their children and their white brothers from a permanent death of the spirit, then nothing can be more redemptive.”
Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And in a real sense this afternoon, we can say that our feet are tired, but our souls are rested. They told us we wouldn't get here. And there were those who said that we would get here only over their dead bodies, (but all the world today knows that we are here and we are standing before the forces of power in the state of Alabama saying, "We ain't goin' let nobody turn us around.”
Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The confrontation of good and evil compressed in the tiny community of Selma generated the massive power to turn the whole nation to a new course. A president born in the South had the sensitivity to feel the will of the country, and in an address that will live in history as one of the most passionate pleas for human rights ever made by a president of our nation, he pledged the might of the federal government to cast off the centuries-old blight. President Johnson rightly praised the courage of the Negro for awakening the conscience of the nation.”
Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The battle is in our hands. And we can answer with creative nonviolence the call to higher ground to which the new directions of our struggle summons us. The road ahead is not altogether a smooth one. There are no broad highways that lead us easily and inevitably to quick solutions. But we must keep going.”
Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“How long? Not long, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There are all too many people who, in some great period of social change, fail to achieve the new mental outlooks that the new situation demands. There is nothing more tragic than to sleep through a revolution. There can be no gainsaying of the fact that a great revolution is taking place in our world today. It is a social revolution, sweeping away the old order of colonialism. And in our own nation it is sweeping away the old order of slavery and racial segregation. The wind of change is blowing, and we see in our day and our age a significant development.”
Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I'd like to suggest some of the things that we must do in order to remain awake and to achieve the proper mental attitudes and responses that the new situation demands. First, I'd like to say that we are challenged to achieve a world perspective. Anyone who feels that we can live in isolation today, anyone who feels that we can live without being concerned about other individuals and other nations is sleeping through a revolution. The world in which we live is geographically one. The great challenge now is to make it one in terms of brotherhood.”
Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We must all learn to live together as brothers — or we will all perish together as fools. This is the great issue facing us today. No individual can live alone; no nation can live alone. We are tied together.”
Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All I'm saying is simply this: that all mankind is tied together; all life is interrelated, and we are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. For some strange reason I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. And you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be — this is the interrelated structure of reality.”
Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Ultimately a genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus, but a molder of consensus.”
Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A Christian movement in an age of revolution cannot allow itself to be limited by geographic boundaries. We must be as concerned about the poor in India as we are about the poor of Indiana.”
Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is no human circumstance more tragic than the persisting existence of a harmful condition for which a remedy is readily available. Family planning, to relate population to world resources, is possible, practical and necessary. Unlike plagues of the dark ages or contemporary diseases we do not yet understand, the modern plague of overpopulation is soluble by means we have discovered and with resources we possess.”
Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What is lacking is not sufficient knowledge of the solution but universal consciousness of the gravity of the problem and education of the billions who are its victims.”
Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For these reasons we are natural allies of those who seek to inject any form of planning in our society that enriches life and guarantees the right to exist in freedom and dignity. For these constructive movements we are prepared to give our energies and consistent support; because in the need for family planning, Negro and white have a common bond; and together we can and should unite our strength for the wise preservation, not of races in general, but of the one race we all constitute — the human race.”
Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read: Vietnam. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over. So it is that those of us who are yet determined that America will be — are — are led down the path of protest and dissent, working for the health of our land.”
Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love.”
Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”
Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and nonviolence, when it helps us to see the enemy's point of view, to hear his questions, to know his assessment of ourselves. For from his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition.”
Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.”
Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. And history is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate.”
Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect. Omar Khayyam is right: "The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on.”
Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent coannihilation. We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world, a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.”
Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Now, of course, one of the difficulties in speaking out today grows the fact that there are those who are seeking to equate dissent with disloyalty. It's a dark day in our nation when high-level authorities will seek to use every method to silence dissent. But something is happening, and people are not going to be silenced. The truth must be told, and I say that those who are seeking to make it appear that anyone who opposes the war in Vietnam is a fool or a traitor or an enemy of our soldiers is a person that has taken a stand against the best in our tradition.”
Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is something strangely inconsistent about a nation and a press that would praise you when you say, "Be nonviolent toward Jim Clark," but will curse and damn you when you say, "Be nonviolent toward little brown Vietnamese children." There is something wrong with that press.”
Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Let me say finally that I oppose the war in Vietnam because I love America. I speak out against this war, not in anger, but with anxiety and sorrow in my heart, and, above all, with a passionate desire to see our beloved country stand as the moral example of the world. I speak out against this war because I am disappointed with America. And there can be no great disappointment where there is not great love. I am disappointed with our failure to deal positively and forthrightly with the triple evils of racism, economic exploitation, and militarism.”
Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Today Negroes want above all else to abolish poverty in their lives and in the lives of the white poor. This is the heart of their program. To end the humiliation was a start, but to end poverty is a bigger task. It is natural for Negroes to turn to the labor movement because it was the first and pioneer anti-poverty program....”
Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Negroes are not the only poor in the nation. There are nearly twice as many white poor as Negro, and therefore the struggle against poverty is not involved solely with color or racial discrimination but with elementary economic justice....”
Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Now most serious thinkers acknowledge that dislocations in the market operation of our economy and the prevalence of discrimination thrust people into idleness and bind them in constant or frequent unemployment against their will. The poor are less often dismissed from our conscience today by being branded as inferior and incompetent. We also know that no matter how dynamically the economy develops and expands, it does not eliminate all poverty.”
Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To a degree, we have been attacking the problem by increasing purchasing power through higher wage scales and increased Social Security benefits. But these measures are exercised with restraint and come only as a consequence of organized struggles...Those at the lowest economic level, the poor white, the Negro, the aged, are traditionally unorganized and have little or no ability to force a growth in their consumer potential. They stagnate or become even poorer in relation to the larger society.”
Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In short, over the last ten years the Negro decided to straighten his back up, realizing that a man cannot ride your back unless it is bent.”
Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This is where we are. Where do we go from here? First, we must massively assert our dignity and worth. We must stand up amidst a system that still oppresses us and develop an unassailable and majestic sense of values.”
Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We must stand up and say, "I'm black and I'm beautiful," and this self-affirmation is the black man's need, made compelling by the white man's crimes against him.”
Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A host of positive psychological changes inevitably will result from widespread economic security. The dignity of the individual will flourish when the decisions concerning his life are in his own hands, when he has the means to seek self-improvement. Personal conflicts among husbands, wives and children will diminish when the unjust measurement of human worth on the scale of dollars is eliminated.”
Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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. Now, when I say question the whole society, it means ultimately coming to see that the problem of racism, the problem of exploitation, and the problem of war are all tied together. These are the triple evils that are interrelated.”
Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What I'm saying today is that we must go from this convention and say, "America, you must be born again!" And so, I conclude by saying today that we have a task, and let us go out with a divine dissatisfaction.”
Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Let us be dissatisfied until America will no longer have a high blood pressure of creeds and an anemia of deeds.”
Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Before I was a civil rights leader, I was a preacher of the Gospel. This was my first calling and it still remains my greatest commitment. You know, actually all that I do in civil rights I do because I consider it a part of my ministry. I have no other ambitions in life but to achieve excellence in the Christian ministry. I don't plan to run for any political office. I don't plan to do anything but remain a preacher. And what I'm doing in this struggle, along with many others, grows out of my feeling that the preacher must be concerned about the whole man.”
Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And any religion that professes to be concerned about the souls of men and is not concerned about the slums that cripple the souls — the economic conditions that stagnate the soul and the city governments that may damn the soul — is a dry, dead, do-nothing religion in need of new blood.”
Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This man talked like he could build the barns by himself, like he could till the soil by himself. And he failed to realize that wealth is always a result of the commonwealth.”
Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source