Martin Luther King, Jr. Quotes

The truth may hurt, but love helps ease the pain.

I would suffer all the humiliation, all the torture, the absolute ostracism and even death, to prevent violence

What the Negro wants - and will not stop until he gets - is absolute and unqualified freedom and equality here in this land of his birth, and not in Africa or in some imaginary state. The Negro no longer will be tolerant of anything less than his due right and heritage. He is pursuing only that which he knows is honorably his. He knows that he is right.

History is a great teacher. Now everyone knows that the labor movement did not diminish the strength of the nation but enlarged it. By raising the living standards of millions, labor miraculously created a market for industry and lifted the whole nation to undreamed of levels of production. Those who attack labor forget these simple truths, but history remembers them.

The self cannot be self without other selves.

Since being in India, I am more convinced than ever before that the method of nonviolent resistance is the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for justice and human dignity.

One of these days I'm going to put my body where my mind is.

Those of us who love peace must organize as effectively as the war hawks. As they spread the propaganda of war, we must spread the propaganda of peace.

It's very easy for one talking about violence and hatred for the white man to appeal to [Negro from ghetto]. I have never thought of this, but I think this is quite true, that if, even if you talk to them about nonviolence from a tactical point of view, they can't quite see it because they don't even know they're outnumbered.

You have very little morally persuasive power with people who can feel your underlying contempt.

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.

Hate destroys the hater.

My friends, all I'm trying to say is that if we are to go forward today, we've got to go back and rediscover some mighty precious values that we've left behind. That's the only way that we would be able to make of our world a better world, and to make of this world what God wants it to be and the real purpose and meaning of it.

Those who love peace must learn to organize as effectively as those who love war.

We must in strength and humility meet hate with love.

‎It is a cruel injustice to tell a bootless man to pull himself up by his bootstraps.

The law of "An eye for an eye" will eventually leave everyone blind.

Love is creative, understanding goodwill for all men. It is the refusal to defeat any individual.

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.

I am not interested in power for power's sake, but I'm interested in power that is moral, that is right and that is good.

We must pursue peaceful end through peaceful means.

We will not build a peaceful world by following a negative path. It is not enough to say we will not wage war. It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it. We must concentrate not merely on the negative expulsion of war, but on the positive affirmation of peace

I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.

There is nothing new about poverty. What is new, however, is that we have the resources to get rid of it.

In the current struggle, there is one positive course of action. There is no alternative, for the alternative would connote a rear march.

The failures of the past must not be an excuse for the inaction of the present and the future.

Resistance and nonviolence are not in themselves good. There is another element that must be present in our struggle that then makes our resistance and nonviolence truly meaningful. That element is reconciliation. Our ultimate end must be the creation of the beloved community.

Never, never be afraid to do what's right, especially if the well-being of a person or animal is at stake. Society's punishments are small compared to the wounds we inflict on our soul when we look the other way.

I have a dream today!

It's not the violence of the few that scares me, it's the silence of the many

As I like to say to the people in Montgomery: "The tension in this city is not between white people and Negro people. The tension is, at bottom, between justice and injustice, between the forces of light and the forces of darkness.

Somewhere somebody must have some sense. Men must see that force begets force, hate begets hate, toughness begets toughness. And it is all a descending spiral, ultimately ending in destruction for all and everybody. Somebody must have sense enough and morality enough to cut off the chain of hate and the chain of evil in the universe. And you do that by love.

Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice.

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.

Each one of us has the power to make others feel better or worse.Making others feel better is much more fun than making others feel worse.Making others feel better generally makes us feel better

We must face the appalling fact that we have been betrayed by both the Democratic and Republican Parties.

Philanthropy is commendable, but it must not cause the philanthropist to overlook the circumstances of economic injustice which make philanthropy necessary.

Will we march only to the music of time, or will we, risking criticism and abuse, march to the soul-saving music of eternity?

We can either walk the highroad of brotherhood or the low road of man's inhumanity to man.

A man who has nothing he is willing to die for has nothing worth living for

Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time: the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence. Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.

The time has come for an all-out war against poverty. The rich nations must use their vast resources of wealth to develop the underdeveloped, school the unschooled, and feed the unfed. Ultimately a great nation is a compassionate nation. No individual or nation can be great if it does not have a concern for "the least of these".

Personality is like a charioteer with two headstrong horses, each wanting to go in different directions.

The words 'I will forgive you, but I'll never forget what you've done' never explain the real nature of forgiveness.

I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today - my own government.... There is something strangely inconsistent about a nation and a press that would praise you when you say, 'Be nonviolent toward Jim Clark,' but will curse and damn you when you say, 'Be nonviolent toward little brown Vietnamese children!' There is something wrong with that press.

Life isn't worth living until you have found something worth dying for.

The most dangerous criminal may be the man gifted with reason, but with no morals.

It is a tragic mix-up when the United States spends 500,000 for every enemy soldier killed, and only 53 annually on the victims of poverty.

The group consisting of mother, father and child is the main educational agency of mankind.

Education must enable a man to become more efficient, to achieve with increasing facility the legitimate goals of his life.

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

My place is in the sunlight of opportunity.

Without hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the primitive forces of social stagnation. So we must help time and realize that the time is always ripe to do right.

We have flown the air like birds and swum the sea like fishes, but have yet to learn the simple act of walking the earth like brothers.

We in the West must bear in mind that the poor countries are poor primarily because we have exploited them through political or economic colonialism.

I know that love is ultimately the only answer to mankind's problems. And I'm going to talk about it everywhere I go. I know it isn't popular to talk about it in some circles today. I'm not talking about emotional bosh when I talk about love, I'm talking about a strong, demanding love.

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

Be true to what you said on paper.

There comes a time when people get tired of being pushed out of the glittering sunlight of life's July and left standing amid the piercing chill of an alpine November.

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