FAMOUS QUOTES BY MARTIN LUTHER KING
“We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.”
martin luther kING jr.
“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.”
“There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.”
“There comes a time when silence is betrayal.”
“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
“Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal.”
“As my sufferings mounted I soon realized that there were two ways in which I could respond to my situation – either to react with bitterness or seek to transform the suffering into a creative force. I decided to follow the latter course.”
“I have a dream that one day little black boys and girls will be holding hands with little white boys and girls.”
“We must live together as brothers or perish together as fools.”
“Science investigates; religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge, which is power; religion gives man wisdom, which is control. Science deals mainly with facts, religion deals mainly with values. The two are not rivals.”
FAMOUS QUOTES BY MARTIN LUTHER KING
“People fail to get along because they fear each other; they fear each other because they don’t know each other; they don’t know each other because they have not communicated with each other.”
“No person has the right to rain on your dreams.”
“One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.”
“A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching a spiritual doom.”
“Wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.”
“Not only will we have to repent for the sins of bad people; but we also will have to repent for the appalling silence of good people.”
“The time is always right to do the right thing.”
“Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?'”
“There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love.”
“If I cannot do great things, I can do small things in a great way.”
FAMOUS QUOTES BY MARTIN LUTHER KING
“Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.”
“On some positions, cowardice asks the question, is it expedient? And then expedience comes along and asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? Conscience asks the question, is it right?
There comes a time when one must take the position that is neither safe nor politic nor popular, but he must do it because conscience tells him it is right.”
“Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it.”
“The choice is not between violence and nonviolence but between nonviolence and nonexistence.”
“Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy to a friend.”
“The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was: ‘If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?’ But… the good Samaritan reversed the question: ‘If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?'”
“We must rapidly begin the shift from a “thing-oriented” society to a “person-oriented” society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”
“Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty we are free at last.”
“Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love with power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.”
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”
FAMOUS QUOTES BY MARTIN LUTHER KING
“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.”
“Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.”
“True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.”
“Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars… Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”
“Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.”
“One of the great liabilities of history is that all too many people fail to remain awake through great periods of social change. Every society has its protectors of status quo and its fraternities of the indifferent who are notorious for sleeping through revolutions. Today, our very survival depends on our ability to stay awake, to adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant and to face the challenge of change.”
“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.”
“Lightning makes no sound until it strikes.”
“An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.”
“Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane.”
FAMOUS QUOTES BY MARTIN LUTHER KING
“No work is insignificant. All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.”
“The greatest purveyor of violence in the world: My own government, I can not be silent.”
“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.”
“It’s all right to tell a man to lift himself by his own bootstraps, but it is cruel to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps.”
“Not everybody can be famous but everybody can be great, because greatness is determined by service.”
“We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there “is” such a thing as being too late. This is no time for apathy or complacency. This is a time for vigorous and positive action.”
“The day we see the truth and cease to speak is the day we begin to die.”
“Those who love peace must learn to organize as effectively as those who love war.”
“Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”
FAMOUS QUOTES BY MARTIN LUTHER KING
“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.”
“Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of starts. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.”
“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
“Human progress is neither automatic not inevitable… Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.”
“We may have all come on different ships, but we’re in the same boat now.”
“There is no gain without struggle.”
“Quietly endure, silently suffer and patiently wait.”
“One of the great tragedies of life is that men seldom bridge the gulf between practice and profession, between doing and saying… On the one hand, we proudly profess certain sublime and noble principles, but on the other hand, we sadly practice the very antithesis of these principles… This strange dichotomy, this agonizing gulf between the ‘ought’ and the ‘is’, represents the tragic theme of man’s earthly pilgrimage.”
“It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching mew, and I think that’s pretty important.”
“It is cheerful to God when you rejoice or laugh from the bottom of your heart.”
FAMOUS QUOTES BY MARTIN LUTHER KING
“I became convinced that noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good.”
“A right delayed is a right denied.”
“True peace is not merely the absence of tension: it is the presence of justice.”
“Occasionally in life there are those moments of unutterable fulfillment which cannot be completely explained by those symbols called words. Their meanings can only be articulated by the inaudible language of the heart.”
“Tale the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.”
“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.”
“The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.”
“It does not matter how long you live, but how well you do it.”
“Morality cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. Judicial decrees may not change the heart, but they can restrain the heartless.”
“If we do an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, we will be a blind and toothless nation.”
FAMOUS QUOTES BY MARTIN LUTHER KING
“One day we will learn that the heart can never be totally right when the head is totally wrong.”
“We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”
“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.”
“A lie cannot live.”
“One dignity may be assaulted, vandalized, cruelly mocked, but it can never be taken away unless it is surrendered.”
“There is nothing more majestic than the determined courage of individuals willing to suffer and sacrifice for their freedom and dignity.”
“We must remember that intelligence is not enough. Intelligence plus character – that is the goal of true education. The complete education gives one not only power of concentration, but worthy objectives upon which to concentrate.”
“Be the peace you wish to see in the world.”
“What affects one in a major way, affects all in a minor way.”
“Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man’s sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true.”
“Procrastination is the thief of time.”
“Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking… Nothing pains some people more than having to think.”
