John Luther King Quotes & Sayings

I have decided to love. If you are seeking the highest good, I think you can find it through love. And the beautiful thing is that we are moving against wrong when we do it, because John was right, God is love. He who hates does not know God, but he who has love has the key that unlocks the door to the meaning of ultimate reality. — Martin Luther King Jr.

That there are such devices as firearms, as easy to operate as cigarette lighters and as cheap as toasters, capable at anybody's whim of killing Father or Fats or Abraham Lincoln or John Lennon or Martin Luther King, Jr., or a woman pushing a baby carriage, should be proof enough for anybody that being alive is a crock of shit. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

It was now pointed out that the black male child, even in a black school using white textbooks, could early come to the conclusion that all the heroes in history were white men. Furthermore, with the exception of nationally known black civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King, Roy Wilkins, James Farmer, and others, the black male child frequently saw the adult black male as ineffectual and defeated. The old picture of the white man leading the black man by the hand toward the solution to his problems again gave the black male child a view of the adult black male as something not worth becoming, and killed his spirit and his will to become an adult, problem-solving individual. — John Howard Griffin

Certainly many Northern cities deplored what was going on in the South. But when Martin Luther King, who had been so praised in the North for the work he did in the South, came to work in the cities of the North, the very officials who had praised him sometimes led opposition to his work locally. — John Howard Griffin

Movies, TV, sports, come and go, but what you stand for is what people remember. Mandela, Martin Luther King, John Kennedy are people who really stood for something and were willing to die for it. You don't see a whole lot of that any more. — Christopher Judge

The heroes of my childhood were Martin Luther King Jr. and John F. Kennedy ... but I was inspired by the ideals of our 40th president and became a Republican. — Mike Pence

John Lennon imagined a world filled with peace and love. Martin Luther King dreamt of a world free from racial discrimination and oppression. The guy who invented the Frisbee, dreamt of a world where people would throw a fat, circular object at each other in order to pass the time. He succeeded. — Jon Lajoie

I want to be like Gandhi and Martin Luther King and John Lennon but i want to STAY ALIVE. — Madonna

When I was 15 years old and in the tenth grade, I heard of Martin Luther King, Jr. Three years later, when I was 18, I met Dr. King and we became friends. Two years after that I became very involved in the civil rights movement. I was in college at that time. As I got more and more involved, I saw politics as a means of bringing about change. — John Lewis

Merger Evers/John F. Kennedy/Malcolm X/Martin Luther King/Robert Kennedy/Che Guevara/Patrice Lamumba/George Jackson/Cynthia Wesley/Addie Mae Collins/Denise McNair/Carole Robertson/Viola Liuzzo
It was a decade marked by death. Violent and inevitable. Funerals became engraved on the brain, intensifying the ephemeral nature of life. For many in the South it was a decade reminiscent of earlier times, when oak trees sighed over their burdens in the wind; Spanish moss draggled blood to the ground; amen corners creaked with grief; and the thrill of being able, once again, to endure unendurable loss produced so profound an ecstasy in mourners that they strutted, without noticing their feet, along the thin backs of benches: their piercing shouts of anguish and joy never interrupted by an inglorious fall. They shared rituals for the dead to be remembered. — Alice Walker

I heard of Martin Luther King Jr. when I was 15 years old. I heard of Rosa Parks. And I met Dr. King in 1958 at the age of 18. I met Rosa Parks ... But to pick up a fun comic book - some people used to call them "funny books" - to pick this little book up, it sold for 10 cents, 12 pages or 14 pages? 14 pages I digested. And it inspired me. And I said to myself, "If the people of Montgomery can do this, maybe I can do something. Maybe I can make a contribution." — John Lewis

We don't really know who killed Martin Luther King. We don't really know who killed Bobby Kennedy. We don't really know who killed John Kennedy. We don't really know who killed Tupac Shakur. — Cynthia McKinney

Recently, John and I got to go to Selma and perform it on the same bridge that Martin Luther King walked over. Once a landmark of a divided nation, the spirit of this bridge now for all people regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation or social status. This bridge was built on hope and welded with compassion. Common — John Legend

Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King are great examples of fantastic nonviolents who died violently. I can never work that out. We're pacifists, but I'm not sure what it means when you're such a pacifist that you get shot. I can never understand that. — John Lennon

If this were a courageous country,
it would ask Gloria to lead it
since she is sane and funny and beautiful and smart
and the National Leaders we've always had
are not.
When I listen to her talk about women's rights
children's rights
men's rights
I think of the long line of Americans
who should have been president, but weren't.
Imagine Crazy Horse as president. Sojourner Truth.
John Brown. Harriet Tubman. Black Elk or Geronimo.
Imagine President Martin Luther King confronting
the youthful "Oppie" Oppenheimer. Imagine President
Malcolm X going after the Klan. Imagine President Stevie
Wonder dealing with the "Truly Needy."
Imagine President Shirley Chisholm, Ron Dellums, or
Sweet Honey in the Rock
dealing with Anything.
It is imagining to make us weep with frustration,
as we languish under real estate dealers, killers,
and bad actors. — Alice Walker

I have never had a secret hero in my mind but I have kept a lot of mentors in my mind that are heroes. Gandhi, Jesus, Moses, Martin Luther King they were all secret heroes in my mind because they stood for what they wanted, what they believed in. — John Assaraf

And now let us listen to the groans of Frederick Douglass, feel the lash with Amy, endure the satire of Du Bois, and measure the wrath of Malcolm X; let us contemplate the pathos of black childhood and the tragedy of black womanhood. And let us not forget that [as Martin Luther King Jr. said] "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." And let us also remember that if God has given us a revelation of the true nature of man, surely we will render account if we do not live in the light of that revelation, and especially so if we are called to the holy office of the Christian ministry. — John Piper

That's part of our policy, is not to be taken seriously, because I think our opposition, whoever they may be, in all their manifest forms, don't know how to handle humor. You know, and we are humorous, we are, what are they, Laurel and Hardy. That's John and Yoko, and we stand a better chance under that guise, because all the serious people, like Martin Luther King, and Kennedy, and Gandhi, got shot. — John Lennon

The book Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story, I read it when I was about 17-and-a-half or 18. It changed my life. — John Lewis

Martin Luther King is a notorious liar[] — John G. Schmitz

We were all involved in the death of John Kennedy. We tolerated hate; we tolerated the sick stimulation of violence in all walks of life; and we tolerated the differential application of law, which said that a man's life was sacred only if we agreed with his views. This may explain the cascading grief that flooded the country in late November. We mourned a man who had become the pride of the nation, but we grieved as well for ourselves because we knew we were sick. — Martin Luther King Jr.

Some people think that [it was] Martin Luther King Jr.'s idea to have a boycott. It was a black woman, a teacher, who said we should boycott the buses. You had people like Fannie Lou Hamer; Delta, Mississippi. — John Lewis

Martin Luther King challenged the conscience of my generation, and his words and his legacy continue to move generations to action today at home and around the world. His love and faith is alive in millions of Americans who volunteer each day in soup kitchens or in schools, or who refused to ignore the suffering of millions they'd never met in far-away places when a tsunami brought unthinkable destruction. His vision and his passion is alive in churches and on campuses when millions stand up against the injustice of discrimination anywhere, or the indifference that leaves too many behind. — John F. Kerry

Did you ever stop to thnk about all the people we kill? They're always people who tell us to live together in harmony and try to love one another: Jesus, Ghandi, Lincoln, John Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, John Lennon. They all said: 'Try to live together peacefully.' BAM! Right in the f
in head! Aparently we're not ready for that! — George Carlin

Well, I was always a bit of a political junkie. Even as a kid I would read biographies of presidents and of civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King and Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington. — John Legend

We have come a long way in America because of Martin Luther King, Jr. He led a disciplined, nonviolent revolution under the rule of law, a revolution of values, a revolution of ideas. We've come a long way, but we still have a distance to go before all of our citizens embrace the idea of a truly interracial democracy, what I like to call the Beloved Community, a nation at peace with itself. — John Lewis

The people who have impacted the world didn't live long. Martin Luther King. John F. Kennedy. These people who impact the world were not old people, but they lived so effectively that we cannot erase them from history. — Myles Munroe

We are redeemed one man at a time. There is no family pass ticket or park hopping pass to life. One ticket - one at a time. Man doesn't vanquish hatred or bigotry. The target keeps moving. From the blacks to the Irish; atheists to Christians. But as always there are a few leaders: Ben Franklin, John Quincy Adams, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Abraham Lincoln, Fredrick Douglas, Booker T Washington, Ghandi and Martin Luther King. They know that the march toward freedom never ends, man must be ever vigilant and pray less with his lips and more with his legs. — Glenn Beck

Joining the ranks of some notables who had penned powerful stuff behind bars. Saint Paul, the apostle. John Bunyan. Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Martin Luther King Jr. But, — Craig Parshall

It's hard to deny that an alarming number of those who stood for peace, not war, were either killed by deranged lone gunmen or else died in suspicious circumstances. We refer of course to the likes of JFK, Martin Luther King, Benazir Bhutto, Bobby Kennedy and John Lennon, to name but a few. — James Morcan

Here's an interesting form of murder we came up with: assassination. You know what's interesting about assassination? Well, not only does it change those popularity polls in a big fucking hurry, but it's also interesting to notice who it is we assassinate. Did you ever notice who it is? Stop to think who it is we kill? It's always people who've told us to live together in harmony and try to love one another. Jesus, Gandhi, Lincoln, John Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, John Lennon, they all said, "Try to live together peacefully." BAM! Right in the fucking head. Apparently we're not ready for that. — George Carlin

Some people in the church, like Martin Luther King, Jr., came out against segregation. But if you look at the bulk of organized religion, you will discover that it endorsed slavery and quoted the Bible to approve it; the Pope even owned slaves. — John Shelby Spong

FALSE EQUIVALENCY

If you compare the Koch brothers to George Soros and you compare MSNBC to FOX News then why not compare the NAACP to the Ku Klux Klan, George Washington to King George, Abraham Lincoln to Jefferson Davis, Barack Obama to Vladimir Putin;
If you compare the Democratic party to the Republican party then why not compare Citizens United with Brown versus Board of Education, Churchill to Mussolini, Martin Luther King to George Wallace;
If you compare Liberals to Conservatives then why not compare Boxing to Cage Fighting, Mozart to Salieri, Edward Kennedy Ellington to Lawrence Welk, Three Card Monty to Inside Trading, John Birks Gillespie to Cab Callaway;
If you are mentally slothful enough to engage in false equivalency, why not go all the way? Pretend that ignorance equates with knowledge, Science with Mythology and empathy with apathy? — E. Landon Hobgood