Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr Quotes
If I sought to answer all of the criticisms that cross my desk, my secretaries would be engaged in little else in the course of the day, and I would have no time for constructive work.
Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church's often vocal sanction of things as they are.
If I were constantly worried about death, I couldn't function. After a while, if your life is more or less constantly in peril, you come to a point where you accept the possibility philosophically.
Whatever my doubts, however heavy the burden, I feel that I must accept the task of helping to make this nation and this world a better place to live in - for all men, black and white alike.
Love is understanding, redemptive goodwill for all men, so that you love everybody.
The oppressed must never allow the conscience of the oppressor to slumber. Religion reminds every man that he is his brother's keeper.
Education must enable a man to become more efficient, to achieve with increasing facility the legitimate goals of his life.
Stand up for justice, stand up for truth; and God will be at your side forever.
Ten cures for depression are to go out and do something for someone else and repeat it nine times.
The job of the school is to teach so well that family background is no longer an issue.
I feel that segregation is totally unchristian, and that it is against everything the Christian religion stands for.
We must have our freedom now. We must have the right to vote. We must have equal protection of the law.
A woman can have a smile, and a woman can have a large backside, but I have been to the mountain and I am here to tell you that when a woman has both of those things she is not to be trusted.
If you have not discovered something you are willing to die for, then you are not fit to live.
When I took up the cross I recognized it's meaning. The cross is something that you bear, and ultimately, that you die on.
We aren't going to let any mace stop us. We are masters in our nonviolent movement in disarming police forces; they don't know what to do.
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.
Though we live in the colony of time, we are ultimately responsible to the empire of eternity.
It's not burn baby burn, but learn, baby, learn, so that you can earn, baby, earn.
Once you become dedicated to a cause, personal security is not the goal. What will happen to you personally does not matter. My cause, my race, is worth dying for.
Even if I were certain that the world would end tomorrow, I would plant a tree this very day
A second way that oppressed people sometimes deal with oppression is to resort to physical violence and corroding hatred.
Set yourself earnestly to discover what you are made to do, and then give yourself passionately to the doing of it.
It is appalling that the most segregated hour of Christian America is eleven o'clock on Sunday morning.
God made the world from nothing, and if we can be nothing, then God can make something of us.
Religion operates not only on the vertical plane but also on the horizontal. It seeks not only to integrate men with God but to integrate men with men and each man with himself.
We know of no more crucial civil rights issue facing Congress today than the need to increase the federal minimum wage and extend its coverage.
A good many observers have remarked that if equality could come at once, the Negro would not be ready for it. I submit that the white American is even more unprepared.
The greatness of man cannot be seen in the hours of comfort and convenience, but rather in moments of conflict/adversity
The only time people do not like praise is when too much of it is going toward someone else.