Martin Luther King, Jr. Quotes

“I was much more afraid in Montgomery when I had a gun in my house. When I decided that I couldn’t keep a gun, I came face-to-face with the question of death and I dealt with it. From that point on, I no longer needed a gun nor have I been afraid. Had we become distracted by the question of my safety we would have lost the moral offensive and sunk to the level of our oppressors.”

“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.”

“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”

“I have consistently preached that nonviolence demands that the means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek.”

“unearned suffering is redemptive.”

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

“A man does not measure its height in moments of comfort, but in terms of change and controversy”

“I think in this phase, after the Negro emerges in and from the desegregated society, then a great deal of time must be spent in improving standards which lag behind to a large extent because of segregation,discrimination, and the legacy of slavery.”

“The greatest pain is the pain of a new idea.”

“Cowardice is submissive surrender to circumstances.”

“In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies but the silence of our friends.”

“If humanity is to progress, Gandhi is inescapable.”

“Whom you would change, you must first love.”

“Are you able to accept blows without retaliating?" and "Are you able to endure the ordeals of jail?"”

“Join with the Earth and each other, to bring new life to the land, to restore the waters, to refresh the air, to renew the forests, to care for the plants, to protect the creatures, to celebrate the seas, to rejoice in the sunlight, to sing the song of the stars, to recall our destiny, to renew our spirits, to reinvigorate our bodies, to recreate the human community, to promote justice and peace, to love our children and love one another, to join together as many and diverse expressions of one loving mystery, for the healing of the Earth and the renewal of all life.”

“I became convinced that noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. No other person has been more eloquent and passionate in getting this idea across than Henry David Thoreau. As a result of his writings and personal witness, we are the heirs of a legacy of creative protest.”

“Courage faces fear and thereby masters it”

“There is nothing more dangerous than to build a society with a large segment of people in that society who feel that they have no stake in it; who feel that that have nothing to lose. People who have stake in their society, protect that society, but when they don't have it, they unconsciously want to destroy it.”

“Never succumb to the temptation of bitterness.”

“If you lose hope, somehow you lose the vitality that keeps moving, you lose that courage to be, that quality that helps you go on in spite of it all. And so today I still have a dream.”

“The trailblazers in human, academic, scientific and religious freedom have always been nonconformists.”

“Violence multiplies violence.”

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

“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.”

“Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest.”