Martin Luther Quotes

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.

I know not the way God leads me, but well do I know my Guide.

A man cannot do good before he is made good.

Faith is the yes of the heart.

Hate begets hate; violence begets violence; toughness begets a greater toughness. We must meet the forces of hate with the power of love.

Look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin.

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.

Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.

It is always the right time to do the right thing.

No person has the right to rain on your dreams.

If I wish to compose or write or pray or preach well, I must be angry. Then all the blood in my veins is stirred, and my understanding is sharpened.

One of the great liabilities of history is that all too many people fail to remain awake through great periods of social change.

A lie is like a snowball: the further you roll it the bigger it becomes.

Every evening brings us nearer God.

It is pleasing to the dear God whenever thou rejoicest or laughest from the bottom of thy heart.

True peace is not merely the absence of tension: it is the presence of justice.

I am now convinced that the simplest approach will prove to be the most effective -- the solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a now widely discussed measure: the guaranteed income.

It is not enough to say we must not wage war. It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it.

What man, if he were God, would humble himself to lie in the feedbox of a donkey or to hang upon a cross?

We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation. This may well be mankind's last chance to choose between chaos and community.

He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.

Strange, though I am saved from sin, I am not saved from sinning.

Some people need a fig-leaf on their mouths.

When God works in us, the will, being changed and sweetly breathed upon by the Spirit of God, desires and acts, not from compulsion, but responsively.

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

My conscience is captive to the Word of God

He [Christ] died for me. He made His righteousness mine and made my sin His own; and if He made my sin His own, then I do not have it, and I am free.

The organ in the worship service is a sign of Baal.

Whenever I have prayed earnestly, I have always received more than I asked for. God may delay, but He always comes.

If I fail to spend two hours in prayer each morning, the devil gets the victory through the day. I have so much business I cannot get on without spending three hours daily in prayer.

An eye for an eye leaves everybody blind.

I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be.

Superstition, idolatry, and hypocrisy have ample wages, but truth goes a begging.

How great, therefore, the wickedness of human nature is! How many girls there are who prevent conception and kill and expel tender fetuses, although procreation is the work of God.

What good does it do to sit at the counter when you cannot afford a hamburger?

Before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth, we were here. Before the pen of Jefferson etched across the pages of history the majestic words of the Declaration of Independence, we were here.

Intelligence plus character-that is the goal of true education.

The Law is for the proud and the Gospel for the brokenhearted.

They gave our Master a crown of thorns, why do we hope for a crown of roses?

Nonviolence means avoiding not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. You not only refuse to shoot a man, but you refuse to hate him.

We must be concerned not merely about who murdered them, but about the system, the way of life, the philosophy which produced the murderers .

Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think.

When you are right you cannot be too radical; when you are wrong, you cannot be too conservative.

Almost always, the creative dedicated minority has made the world better.

We are but the instruments or assistants, by whom God works.

Jesus Christ was an extremist for love, truth and goodness.

Many white Americans of good will have never connected bigotry with economic exploitation. They have deplored prejudice but tolerated or ignored economic injustice.

I often laugh at Satan, and there is nothing that makes him so angry as when I attack him to his face, and tell him that through God I am more than a match for him

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

As is the business of tailors to make clothes and cobblers to make shoes, so it is the business of Christians to pray.