Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr Quotes

The idea of a superior or inferior race is a myth that has been completely refuted by anthropological evidence.

Another way that you love your enemy is this: When the opportunity presents itself for you to defeat your enemy, that is the time which you must not do it.

A true revolution of values will see that the western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.

Your self-sacrificin g devotion to your purpose in life and your unwavering faith will carry you through times of difficulty.

Violence is anything that denies human integrity, and leads to hopelessness and helplessness.

Great people aren't those who are happy at times of convienience and content, but of how they are in times of catastrophy and controversy.

I have consistently preached that nonviolence demands that the means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek.

To be Negro in America is to hope against hope.

Science deals mainly with facts; religion deals mainly with values. The two are not rivals. They are complementary.

It all boils down to this: that all life is interrelated.

I cannot forget that the Nobel Prize for Peace was also a commission - a commission to work harder than I had ever worked before for "the brotherhood of man".

The Negro needs the white man to free him from his fears. The white man needs the Negro to free him from his guilt.

We still have a choice today: nonviolence coesistence or violent coannihilation.

In a real sense faith is total surrender to God .

The Negro's problem will not be solved by running away.

My place is in the sunlight of opportunity.

So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.

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 hopes of men the world over.

What seems so necessary today may not even be desirable tomorrow.

The problem with hatred and violence is that they intensity the fears of the white majority, and leave them less ashamed of their prejudices toward Negroes.

In the final analysis the weakness of Black Power is its failure to see that the black man needs the white man and the white man needs the black man.

My mommy always said there were no monsters - no real ones - but there are.

Like anybody, I would like to have a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will.

The choice is not between violence and nonviolence but between nonviolence and nonexistence.

Three hundred years of humiliation, abuse and deprivation cannot be expected to find voice in a whisper.

There is nothing more tragic in all the world than to know right and not to do it.

The true neighbor will risk his position, his prestige, and even his life for the welfare of others.

We have a great dream. It started way back in 1776, and God grant that America will be true to her dream.

Something should remind us once more that the great things in this universe are things that we never see.

The purpose of direct action is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation.

Christ furnished the spirit and motivation while Gandhi furnished the method.

America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked 'insufficient funds.'

Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest.

Moral principles have lost their distinctiveness. For modern man, absolute right and absolute wrong are a matter of what the majority is doing.

Power is the ability to achieve purpose.

It will be one of the tragedies of Christian history if future historians record that at the height of the twentieth century the church was one of the greatest bulwarks of white supremacy.

Hatred and bitterness can never cure the disease of fear; only love can do that. Hatred paralyzes life; love harmonies it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it.

Whatever your life's work is, do it well.

Oh, the worst of all tragedies is not to die young, but to live until I am seventy five and yet not ever truly to have lived.

I refuse to accept the idea that man is mere flotsam and jetsam in the river of life, unable to influence the unfolding events which surround him.

We must move forward in the days ahead with audacious faith. The moral arc of the universe is long but it bends toward justice.

Don't allow anybody to make you feel that you're nobody.

There is a type of constructive nonviolent tension that is necessary for growth

But now I must affirm that it is just as wrong, or perhaps even more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends.

The softminded person always wants to freeze the moment and hold life in the gripping yoke of sameness.

But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation.

Before you finish eating breakfast in the morning, you've depended on more than half of the world.

And when you discover what you will be in your life, set out to do it as if God Almighty called you at this particular moment in history to do it. Don't just set out to do a good job.

History has thrust something upon me from which I cannot turn away.

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.