Martin Luther King Jr. Quotes

To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law.

We must shift the arms race into a 'peace race'.

In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist; negotiation; self-purification; and direct action.

The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy.

The evils of capitalism are as real as the evils of militarism and evils of racism.

By its very nature, hate destroys and tears down; by its very nature, love creates and builds up.

Freedom is one thing. You have it all or you are not free.

Lukewarm acceptance is more bewildering than outright rejection.

It is Love that will save our world and our civilization.

Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity.

Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter - but beautiful - struggle for a new world.

The soft-minded man always fears change. He feels security in the status quo, and he has an almost morbid fear of the new. For him, the greatest pain is the pain of a new idea.

I would rather be a man of conviction than a man of conformity

Justice is love correcting that which revolts against love.

Means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek.

Nothing is so much needed as a secure family life for a people seeking to rise out of poverty and backwardness.

Our goal is to create a beloved community," said Dr. King, "and this will require a qualitative change in our souls as well as a quantitative change in our lives.

I became convinced that noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good.

Whatever your life's work is, do it well. A man should do his job so well that the living, the dead, and the unborn could do it no better.

We must use time creatively.

Love is the only creative, redemptive, transforming power, in the universe.

Wherever schools can be integrated through the busing method, and where it won't be just a, a terrible inconvenience, I think it ought to be done.

One day we will learn that the heart can never be totally right when the head is totally wrong

Racial understanding is not something we find, but something that we must create. Through education, we seek to change attitudes.

I just want to be there in love and in justice and in truth and in commitment to others, so that we can make of this old world a new world.

We must substitute courage for caution.

Racial segregation must be seen for what it is, and that is an evil system, a new form of slavery covered up with certain niceties of complexity.

America must begin the struggle for democracy at home. The advocacy of free elections in Europe by American officials is hypocrisy when free elections are not held in great sections of America.

We've learned to fly the air like birds, we've learned to swim the seas like fish, and yet we haven't learned to walk the earth as brothers and sisters

We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society.

Courage faces fear and thereby masters it. Cowardice represses fear and is thereby mastered by it.

The only weapon that we have in our hands this evening is the weapon of protest. That's all.

It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence in this world; it's nonviolence or nonexistence. That is where we are today.

Ordinarily, a person leaving a courtroom with a conviction behind him would wear a somber face. But I left with a smile. I knew that I was a convicted criminal, but I was proud of my crime.

The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it.

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

One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty.

We must see that peace represents a sweeter music, a cosmic melody, that is far superior to the discords of war.

I refuse to accept the view . . . that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality.

The movement for equality and justice can only be a success if it has both a mass and militant character; the barriers to be overcome require both.

People with good intentions but limited understanding are more dangerous than people with total ill will.

There comes a time when a moral man can't obey a law which his conscience tells him is unjust.

There is within human nature an amazing potential for goodness.

Pity may represent little more than the impersonal concern which prompts the mailing of a check, but true sympathy is the personal concern which demands the giving of one's soul.

Property is intended to serve life, and no matter how much we surround it with rights and respect, it has no personal being. It is part of the earth man walks on. It is not man.

Our age is one of guided missiles and unguided men.

The greatest pain is the pain of a new idea.

This is the unusual thing about nonviolence -- nobody is defeated, everybody shares in the victory.

One day we shall win freedom, but not only for ourselves. We shall so appeal to your heart and conscience that we shall win you in the process, and our victory will be a double victory.

There is such a thing as being too late. This is no time for apathy or complacency. This is a time for vigorous and positive action.