Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr Quotes

Silence is very dangerous, especially when your words can be the only source of healing at a moment.

A leader is someone who creates better ways of doing things and better ways are new and comfortable ways.

If you are not going to divorce the status quo, you will give birth to mediocrity.

A leader’s goal is to improve on upon the past and if your goal is to remain where you are, doing the same things you have done times and times again, you can’t lead.

Never reject the opportunity to take the first step. The first step is the key to obtaining the experience you have longed for.

The most risky day in the world will be the day the bird will decide to swim and the fish will decide to fly. Stay glued to what you can do.

It is not just about what you can do that will make you a leader. It is about how well you can do it.

The more you concentrate on what you discover that you will be good for you to pursue, the more experienced you will be while doing it.

This fact is that the heaviest and more burdensome load ever is neither the cement bag nor the iron rod. It is hatred.

Harbour no hatred in your heart against anyone. People who do this have placed their influence on the risky line.

If you will always remember your age and forget your dream, you will live great years and narrow impacts will come out of it.

A self-leader looks around for problems, and then thinks deep to device solutions to them.

And don’t forget, if you are very intelligent but load yourself with bad characters, nobody will follow you.

Never let your tiny age misguide you to think the time is not yet up. Get up and do it at any age.

You can’t be a self-leader if you are an enemy to yourself. Stop the hatred and love yourself.

Since you can’t be influence by people who hate you, you cannot influence people you hate also.

Not money, not fame and not positions can transform an enemy into a friend but rather, it is love that can do such a job.

Age in just a number. It carries no weight. The real weight is in impacts. The truth is that you can do it at any age. Get up and be willing to leave a mark.

You don’t influence people by commanding them. When you are doing that, you are a manipulator and not a leader.

Just as you won’t enjoy the fruits of the tree you dislike, so you won’t even wait to learn from people you hate.

You can decide to refuse to allow people who aim at hating you to achieve their aims.

No work is insignificant. All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.

Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars... Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.

We must come to see that peace is not merely a distant goal we seek, but it is a means by which we arrive at that goal. We must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means.

Nonviolence is power, but it is the right and good use of power.

Life's most persistent and urgent question is, 'What are you doing for others?

The question is not if we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. The nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.

Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend.

Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree

we shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We will meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will. And we shall continue to love you.

[If] a man doesn't have a job or an income, he has neither life nor liberty nor the possibility for the pursuit of happiness. He merely exists.

One cannot worship the false god of nationalism and the God of Christianity at the same time. .

At the center of non-violence stands the principle of love

Through violence you may murder the hater, but you cannot murder hate.

No one can pretend that because a people may be oppressed, every individual member is virtuous and worthy.

Law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice.

Injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere. Anyone who lives inside the US can never be considered an outsider anywhere in the country

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

My call to the ministry was not a miraculous or supernatural something. On the contrary it was an inner urge calling me to serve humanity.

God is able to give you the power to endure that which cannot be changed... Why be anxious? Come what may, God is able.

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

When religion becomes so involved in a future good "over yonder" that it forgets the present evils over here it is as dry as dust religion and needs to be condemned.

We all came in on different ships, but we're all in the same boat now

In the end, what will hurt us the most is not the words of our enemies but the silence of our friends.

[I] know that love is ultimately the only answer to mankind's problems....

The Cross is the eternal expression of the length to which God will go to in order to restore broken community.

Only a "dry as dust" religion prompts a minister to extol the glories of Heaven while ignoring the social conditions that cause men an Earthly hell.

There can be no deep disappointment where there in not deep love.

If a man hasn’t found something he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.

Our only hope lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism