R.K. King Quotes

Fools are the only folk on the earth who can absolutely count on getting what they deserve.

Today we know with certainty that segregation is dead. The only question remaining is how costly will be the funeral.

What is writing? Writing is telepathy.

What good is having the right to sit at a lunch counter if you can't afford to buy a hamburger?

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.

Alienation is a form of living death. It is the acid of despair that dissolves society.

Had it not been for the ministry of my good friend Dr. Billy Graham, my work in the civil rights movement would not have been as successful as it has been.

Nobody lives forever, but we all shine on.

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

Our problem is not to be rid of fear but rather to harness and master it.

We need not join the mad rush to purchase an earthly fallout shelter. God is our eternal fallout shelter. From Strength to Love, 1963

Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable . . .

Was not Abraham Lincoln an extremist? - "This nation cannot survive half slave and half free."

Darkness is only driven out with light, not more darkness.

All Americans have a sacred duty to guarantee Social Security benefits to our nation's senior citizens

If you write (or paint or dance or sculpt or sing, I suppose), someone will try to make you feel lousy about it, that's all.

When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.

I think the inconveniences of a segregated education are much greater than the inconveniences of busing students so that they can get an integrated quality education.

I’ve been to the Mountaintop

Carve a tunnel of hope through the dark mountain of disappointment.

Weird love's better than no love at all.

A man who lies about beer makes enemies.

Battles that last five minutes spawn legends that live a thousand years.

I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham.

The hope of the world is still in dedicated minorities. The trail-blazers in human, scientific and religious freedom have always been in a minority.

... the right to defend one's home and one's person when attacked has been guaranteed through the ages by common law.

I saw something even more beautiful than a sense of humor: an appreciation for life’s essential absurdity.

Everyone has the power for greatness, not for fame but greatness, because greatness is determined by service.

"I criticize America because I love her. I want her to stand as a moral example to the world."

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

Another reason why we must love our enemies is that hate scars the soul and distorts the personality.

[People] don't see that there's a great deal of a difference between nonresistance to evil and nonviolent resistance.

There's something about love that builds up and is creative. There is something about hate that tears down and is destructive. So love your enemies.

There is no deficit in human resources; the deficit is in human will.

Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity.

Truth crushed to earth will rise again.

It's alright to feel fear, but sometimes a very bad idea to show it.

Good writing is often about letting go of fear and affectation. Affectation itself, beginning with the need to define some sorts of writing as 'good' and other sorts as 'bad' is fearful behavior.

On the subject of love at first sight, I’m with the Beatles: I believe that it happens all the time.

Please be peaceful. We believe in law and order. We are not advocating violence, I want you to love your enemies... for what we are doing is right, what we are doing is just -- and God is with us.

Resistance to change is proportional to how much the future might be altered by any given act.

There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair.

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

Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider.

I've assimilated the hit. I've passed along most of what I can and now I'm prepared to live with it. But in my opinion, prices will come down.

In literary composition a well-chosen quotation lights up the page like a fine engraving.

Nonviolent action, the Negro saw, was the way to supplement, not replace, the progress of change. It was the way to divest himself of passivity without arraying himself in vindictive force.

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 color white is the absence of memory.

If something is accessible to a lot of people, it's got to be dumb because most people are dumb.