Martin Luther King Jr. > Quotes

“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.

“Mother Dear, one day I'm going to turn this world upside down."

--From My Brother Martin, by Christine King Farris”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“We should never forget that everything Adolph Hitler did in Germany was "legal" and everything the Hungarian freedom fighers did in Hungary was "illegal." It was "illegal" to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler's Germany.”
― Martin Luther King, Jr.

“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. So I'm happy tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. ”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“Now, I say to you today my friends, even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American 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.

“Let us all hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away and the deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear-drenched communities, and in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from the Birmingham Jail

“Ten thousand fools proclaim themselves into obscurity, while one wise man forgets himself into immortality.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look at thousands of working people displaced from their jobs with reduced incomes as a result of automation while the profits of the employers remain intact, and say: “This is not just.” It will look across the oceans and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: “This is not just.” It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: “This is not just.” The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: “This way of settling differences is not just.” 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 the 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. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing to prevent us from paying adequate wages to schoolteachers, social workers and other servants of the public to insure that we have the best available personnel in these positions which are charged with the responsibility of guiding our future generations. There is nothing but a lack of social vision to prevent us from paying an adequate wage to every American citizen whether he be a hospital worker, laundry worker, maid or day laborer. There is nothing except shortsightedness to prevent us from guaranteeing an annual minimum—and livable—income for every American family. There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from remolding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?

“What I'm saying to you this morning is that 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.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“We are not makers of history. We are made by history.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“The more I thought about human nature, the more I saw how our tragic inclination for sin/mistakes causes us to use our minds to rationalize our action.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that. ... The chain reaction of evil—hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars—must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“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.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“In our glorious fight for civil rights, we must guard against being fooled by false slogans, such as 'right-to-work.' It provides no 'rights' and no 'works.' Its purpose is to destroy labor unions and the freedom of collective bargaining…. We demand this fraud be stopped.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“[Nonviolence] is directed against forces of evil rather than against persons who happen to be doing the evil. It is evil that the nonviolent resister seeks to defeat, not the persons victimized by evil.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story

“Babies, we are told, are the latest news from heaven.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“We who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface hidden tension that is already alive”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“In some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty. ”
― Martin Luther King Jr., The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.

“The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., I Have a Dream: Writings and Speeches That Changed the World

“Hate is too big of burden to bear. I have decided to love.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“it is just as wrong, or even perhaps more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“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.”
― Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

“What is more tragic than to see a person who has risen to the disciplined heights of tough-mindedness but has at the same time sunk to the passionless depths of hard-heartedness?”
― Martin Luther King Jr., Strength to Love

“Hate is just as injurious to the hater as it is to the hated. Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Many of our inner conflicts are rooted in hate. This is why the psychiatrists say, "Love or perish." Hate is too great a burden to bear.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Christ furnished the spirit and motivation while Gandhi furnished the method.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Let us be those creative dissenters who will call our beloved nation to a higher destiny. To a new plateau of compassion, to a more noble expression of humanness.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment, I still have a dream.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“The road to freedom is a difficult, hard road. It always makes for temporary setbacks.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“The time comes when silence is betrayal. That time has come for us today...

...some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.