Martin Luther King Jr. Quotes

History is the long and tragic story of the fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily.

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

We must meet the forces of hate with the power of love.

One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.

Discrimination is a hellhound that gnaws at Negroes in every waking moment of their lives to remind them that the lie of their inferiority is accepted as truth in the society dominating them.

I want to be the white man's brother, not his brother-in-law.

When evil men plot, good men must plan. When evil men burn and bomb, good men must build and bind. When evil men shout ugly words of hatred, good men must commit themselves to the glories of love.

The quality, not the longevity, of one's life is what is important.

Use me, God. Show me how to take who I am, who I want to be, and what I can do, and use it for a purpose greater than myself.

Courage is an inner resolution to go forward despite obstacles; Cowardice is submissive surrender to circumstances.

An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.

The Curse of poverty has no justification in our age...The time has come for us to civilize ourselves by the total, direct and immediate abolition of poverty.

Life's piano can only produce melodies of brotherhood (and sisterhood) when it is recognized that the black keys are as basic, necessary and beautiful as the white keys.

We must learn that to expect God to do everything while we do nothing is not faith but superstition.

Everything that we see is a shadow cast by that which we do not see.

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit together at the table of brotherhood.

We who in engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive.

We live in a world of guided missiles and misguided men.

I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.

O America, how you've taken necessities from the masses to give luxuries to the classes.

We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.

We must combine the toughness of the serpent with the softness of the dove, a tough mind and a tender heart.

Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.

The human heart is like a ship on a stormy sea driven about by winds blowing from all four corners of heaven.

The great issue of life is to harness the drum major instinct.

The good neighbor looks beyond the external accidents and discerns those inner qualities that make all men human and, therefore, brothers.

History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.

A productive and happy life is not something you find; it is something you make.

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

The SILENCE of the good people is more DANGEROUS than the BRUTALITY of the bad people

The poor in our countries have been shut out of our minds and driven from the mainstream of our societies, because we have allowed them to become invisible.

Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.

Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane.

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.

Injustice and corruption will never be transformed by keeping them hidden, but only by bringing them out into the light and confronting them with the power of love.

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

In some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty.

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

You can kill the dreamer, but you can't kill the dream.

Those who are not looking for happiness are the most likely to find it, because those who are searching forget that the surest way to be happy is to seek happiness for others.

And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

Capital punishment is against the best judgment of modern criminology and, above all, against the highest expression of love in the nature of God.

No work is insignificant. All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity

Don't let anybody make you think that God chose America as his divine, messianic force to be a sort of policeman of the whole world.

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

The reason I can't follow the old eye-for-an-eye philosophy is that it ends up leaving everyone blind.

Call it democracy, or call it democratic socialism, but there must be a better distribution of wealth within this country for all God's children.

Knowledge is a process of piling up facts; wisdom lies in their simplification.

A riot is the language of the unheard.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a desert state, sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.