Martin Luther Quotes

Nonviolence is power, but it is the right and good use of power.

Life's most persistent and urgent question is, 'What are you doing for others?

What would it profit us to possess and perform everything else and be like pure saints, if we meanwhile neglected our chief purpose in life, namely, the care of the young?

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

I cannot hate any man!

You're looking at the face of a black man who hates nobody.

Preach [and live] as if Jesus was crucified yesterday, rose from the dead today, and is returning tomorrow.

Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend.

Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree

we shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We will meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will. And we shall continue to love you.

[If] a man doesn't have a job or an income, he has neither life nor liberty nor the possibility for the pursuit of happiness. He merely exists.

Thus God's work and His eyes are in the depths, but man's only in the height.

One cannot worship the false god of nationalism and the God of Christianity at the same time. .

At the center of non-violence stands the principle of love

Through violence you may murder the hater, but you cannot murder hate.

Everything bad in the Old Testament (and there's a lot) is there to point out our sin, while everything good in the Old Testament is there to point us to our Savior.

No one can pretend that because a people may be oppressed, every individual member is virtuous and worthy.

Law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice.

Injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere. Anyone who lives inside the US can never be considered an outsider anywhere in the country

We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.

In his life Christ is an example showingus how to live in his death he is a sacrifice satisfying our sins in his resurrection a conqueror in his ascension a king in his intercession a high priest.

He who sleeps does not sin.

...so unbelief alone commits sin..Hence Christ calls unbelief the only sin.

Thus, dear friends, I have said it clearly enough, and I believe you ought to understand it and not make liberty a law...

My call to the ministry was not a miraculous or supernatural something. On the contrary it was an inner urge calling me to serve humanity.

God is able to give you the power to endure that which cannot be changed... Why be anxious? Come what may, God is able.

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

When religion becomes so involved in a future good "over yonder" that it forgets the present evils over here it is as dry as dust religion and needs to be condemned.

We all came in on different ships, but we're all in the same boat now

In the end, what will hurt us the most is not the words of our enemies but the silence of our friends.

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

The Cross is the eternal expression of the length to which God will go to in order to restore broken community.

Only a "dry as dust" religion prompts a minister to extol the glories of Heaven while ignoring the social conditions that cause men an Earthly hell.

It is neither right nor safe to go against my conscience.

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

If a man hasn’t found something he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.

Our only hope lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism

The limitation of riots, moral questions aside, is that they cannot win, and their participants know it.

There comes a time when people get tired of being trampled over by the iron feet of oppression.

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

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.

Music is the art of the prophets the only art that can calm the agitations of the soul it is one of the most magnificent and delightful presents God has given us.

The fewer the words the better prayer.

Christian life consists of faith and charity.

If a man hasn't discovered something that he will die for he isn't fit to live.

I am more afraid of my own heart than of the pope and all his cardinals. I have within me the great pope self.

Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me. Amen.

We must constantly build dykes of courage to hold back the flood of fear.

Human Salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.

Our Lord has written the promise of resurrection not in books alone but in every leaf in springtime.