Martin Luther King, Jr.

If you succumb to the temptation of using violence in the struggle, unborn generations will be the recipients of a long and desolute night of bitterness, and your chief legacy to the future will be an endless reign of meaningless chaos.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

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.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

From the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire, let freedom ring. From the mighty mountains of New York, let freedom ring. From the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania, let freedom ring. But not only that: Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

The moral arc of the universe bends toward justice.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

We must concentrate not merely on the negative expulsion of war but the positive affirmation of peace.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

As long as there is poverty in the world I can never be rich, even if I have a billion dollars. As long as diseases are rampant and millions of people in this world cannot expect to live more than twenty-eight or thirty years, I can never be totally healthy even if I just got a good checkup at Mayo Clinic. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the way our world is made. No individual or nation can stand out boasting of being independent. We are interdependent.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

We have flown the air like birds and swum the sea like fishes, but have yet to learn the simple act of walking the earth like brothers.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

We may have all come on different ships, but we're in the same boat now.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

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.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

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?
Martin Luther King, Jr.

Everybody can be great... because anybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into friend.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

Seeing is not always believing.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

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.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

We are not makers of history. We are made by history.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

One of the greatest casualties of the war in Vietnam is the Great Society... shot down on the battlefield of Vietnam.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

The hope of a secure and livable world lies with disciplined nonconformists who are dedicated to justice, peace and brotherhood.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

Philanthropy is commendable, but it must not cause the philanthropist to overlook the circumstances of economic injustice which make philanthropy necessary.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

There is nothing more tragic than to find an individual bogged down in the length of life, devoid of breadth.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

Life's most persistent and urgent question is, 'What are you doing for others?'
Martin Luther King, Jr.

The quality, not the longevity, of one's life is what is important.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

The means by which we live have outdistanced the ends for which we live.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

I just want to do God's will. And he's allowed me to go to the mountain. And I've looked over, and I've seen the promised land! I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

So I'm happy tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!
Martin Luther King, Jr.

The hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who remain neutral in times of great moral conflict.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

Faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the whole staircase.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

Everything that is done in the world is done by hope.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

A lie cannot live.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

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.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

Science investigates religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge which is power religion gives man wisdom which is control.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

A man can't ride your back unless it's bent.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

A man who won't die for something is not fit to live.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

A right delayed is a right denied.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

If we are to go forward, we must go back and rediscover those precious values - that all reality hinges on moral foundations and that all reality has spiritual control.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

Put yourself in a state of mind where you say to yourself, ?Here is an opportunity for me to celebrate like never before, my own power, my own ability to get myself to do whatever is necessary?.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

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.

A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

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.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

Power at its best is love implementing the demand of justice.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable... Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

All progress is precarious, and the solution of one problem brings us face to face with another problem.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

If a man is called to be a streetsweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great streetsweeper who did his job well.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

The limitation of riots, moral questions aside, is that they cannot win and their participants know it. Hence, rioting is not revolutionary but reactionary because it invites defeat. It involves an emotional catharsis, but it must be followed by a sense of futility.
Martin Luther King, Jr., The Trumpet of Conscience

We will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.
Martin Luther King, Jr., The Trumpet of Conscience

The sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality.
Martin Luther King, Jr., I Have a Dream

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.
Martin Luther King, Jr., I Have a Dream

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made straight and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.
Martin Luther King, Jr., I Have a Dream

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.
Martin Luther King, Jr., I Have a Dream

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.
Martin Luther King, Jr., I Have a Dream

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.
Martin Luther King, Jr., Southern Christian Leadership Conference

Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.
Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter From Birmingham Jail

There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love.
Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter From Birmingham Jail

We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people.
Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter From Birmingham Jail

The Negro's great stumbling block in the drive toward freedom is not the White Citizens Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice.
Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from a Birmingham Jail

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. If the inexpressible cruelties of slavery could not stop us, the opposition we now face will surely fail.
Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from a Birmingham Jail

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., Letter from a Birmingham Jail

The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice? In that dramatic scene on Calvary's hill three men were crucified. We must never forget that 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.
Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from a Birmingham Jail

I want to be the white man?s brother, not his brother-in-law.
Martin Luther King, Jr., New York Journal

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.
Martin Luther King, Jr., Loving Your Enemies

Never succumb to the temptation of bitterness.
Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength to Love

Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.
Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter From Birmingham City Jail

Everything that we see is a shadow cast by that which we do not see.
Martin Luther King, Jr., The Measure of a Man