King Luther Martin Quotes & Sayings

Nichelle Nichols had decided leave the original Star Trek series after the first season. Fed up with racist harassment and limitation, culminating with her learning that studio executives were withholding her fan mail, she submitted her resignation. She withdrew it when Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. convinced her that her role was too important a cultural breakthrough to leave. — Nichelle Nichols

When we look at modern man, we have to face the fact ... that modern man suffers from a kind of poverty of the spirit, which stands in glaring contrast to his scientific and technological abundance; We've learned to fly the air like birds, we've learned to swim the seas like fish, and yet we haven't learned to walk the Earth as brothers and sisters ... — Martin Luther King Jr.

But lost in that sea of (valid) criticism is the perhaps subtler critique that in an age of consumerism, economic imperialism and what Martin Luther King Jr. called "jumboism," the sacrificial way of Jesus may be calling us to forsake the supersized life. — C. Christopher Smith

Personalism's insistence that only personality-finite and infinite-is ultimately real strengthened me in two convictions: it gave me metaphysical and philosophical grounding for the idea of a personal God, and it gave me a metaphysical basis for the dignity and worth of all human personality. — Martin Luther King Jr.

Like the word hope, we often think of power as negative. It's not. The best definition of power comes from Martin Luther King Jr. He described power as the ability to effect change. — Brene Brown

Our generation will not have regretted both perverse crimes, and the eerie silence of the kind — Martin Luther King Jr.

We need to recapture the gospel glow of the early Christians who were nonconformists in the truest sense of the word ... Their powerful gospel put an end to such barbaric evils as infanticide and bloody gladiatorial contests. Finally, they captured the Roman Empire for Jesus Christ. — Martin Luther King Jr.

Communism forgets that life is individual. Capitalism forgets that life is social, and the kingdom of brotherhood is found neither in the thesis of communism nor the antithesis of capitalism but in a higher synthesis. It is found in a higher synthesis that combines the truths of both. — Martin Luther King Jr.

Your self-sacrificin g devotion to your purpose in life and your unwavering faith will carry you through times of difficulty. — Martin Luther King Jr.

I was much more afraid in Montgomery when I had a gun in my house. When I decided that I couldn't keep a gun, I came face-to-face with the question of death and I dealt with it. From that point on, I no longer needed a gun nor have I been afraid. Had we become distracted by the question of my safety we would have lost the moral offensive and sunk to the level of our oppressors. — Martin Luther King Jr.

Faith can give us courage to face the uncertainties of the future. — Martin Luther King Jr.

Most of these people will never make the headlines and their names will not appear in Who's Who. Yet when years have rolled past and when the blazing light of truth is focused on this marvelous age in which we live - men and women will know and children will be taught that we have a finer land, a better people, a more noble civilization - because these humble children of God were willing to suffer for righteousness' sake. — Martin Luther King Jr.

I hate it when people quote me on the internet, claiming I said things that I never actually said. — Martin Luther King Jr.

Ladies and gentlemen of the press, I stand before you a free man. Free in body, free in spiret and free in mind! It has been a long, hard and excruciatingingly painful road. For more than five years there has been one investigation after another and now, vindication. And to give the proper dimension I take the cherished words of the late great Dr Martin Luther King: Free at last ... thank God Almighty, I'm free at last. — Don King

We must see that peace represents a sweeter music, a cosmic melody, that is far superior to the discords of war. — Martin Luther King Jr.

The most dangerous type of atheism is not theoretical atheism, but practical atheism -that's the most dangerous type. And the world, even the church, is filled up with people who pay lip service to God and not life service. And there is always a danger that we will make it appear externally that we believe in God when internally we don't. We say with our mouths that we believe in him, but we live with our lives like he never existed. That is the ever-present danger confronting religion. That's a dangerous type of atheism. — Martin Luther King Jr.

A woman can have a smile, and a woman can have a large backside, but I have been to the mountain and I am here to tell you that when a woman has both of those things she is not to be trusted. — Martin Luther King Jr.

Though we live in the colony of time, we are ultimately responsible to the empire of eternity. — Martin Luther King Jr.

I must face the fact, as all others in positions of leadership must do, that America today is an extremely sick nation, and that something could well happen to me at any time. I feel, though, that my cause is so right, so moral, that if I should lose my life, in some way it would aid the cause. — Martin Luther King Jr.

We have waited for more than three hundred and forty years for our constitutional and God-given rights. — Martin Luther King Jr.

[E]very human life is a reflection of divinity, and ... every act of injustice mars and defaces the image of God in man. — Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King's 'I Have a Dream' speech always sends me down some path, some trajectory of some creative idea. — Abigail Washburn

Racial segregation must be seen for what it is, and that is an evil system, a new form of slavery covered up with certain niceties of complexity. — Martin Luther King Jr.

Why is the church always a taillight rather than a headlight? — Martin Luther King Jr.

Intelligence plus character is the true meaning of education. — Martin Luther King Jr.

the time is always right to do the right thing — Martin Luther King Jr.

Malcolm X recognized that difference contains its own value, and that the struggle must be to advance that value. Martin Luther King is admired by everyone, he wants everyone to join together, but this idea that you should let them hit you on the other side of your face, this makes no sense to me. — Teju Cole

Sometimes, people don't need our homes to live in or our bodies to lean on. All they need are our hands to lift them up. — Israelmore Ayivor

If Martin [Luther King, Jr.]'s philosophy had been embraced and lived out in Iraq and other places, we wouldn't have bin Ladens. — Coretta Scott King

One who condones evils is just as guilty as the one who perpetrates it. — Martin Luther King Jr.

Let's go beyond the Trinity of African-American History. There are so many more to learn about other than Harriett Tubman, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Rosa Parks. — Karimah Grayson

When our days become dreary with low-hovering clouds and our nights become darker than a thousand midnights, we will know that we are living in the creative turmoil of a genuine civilization struggling to be born. — Martin Luther King Jr.

There is no Jesus without Judas, no Martin Luther King, Jr., without the Klan; no Ali without Joe Frazier; no freedom without tyranny. No wisdom exists that does not include perspective. Relativity is the greatest gift. — Chris Crutcher

We ain't goin' study war no more. — Martin Luther King Jr.

Science keeps religion from sinking into the valley of crippling irrationalism and paralyzing obscurantism. Religion prevents science from falling into the marsh of obsolete materialism and moral nihilism. — Martin Luther King Jr.

Only when it is dark enough can we see the stars. — Martin Luther King Jr.

Agape means recognition of the fact that all life is interrelated. All humanity is involved in a single process, and all men are brothers. To the degree that I harm my brother, no matter what he is doing to me, to that extent I am harming myself. — Martin Luther King Jr.

We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. — Martin Luther King Jr.

The Darwinian concept of the survival of the fittest has been substituted by a philosophy of the survival of the slickest. — Martin Luther King Jr.

When white supremacy becomes institutional, it begins to harm the very people who are not simply outside of it because of their race, it begins to harm the folk who look like the folk who want to be in charge. Martin Luther King, Jr., understood this, Malcolm X understood this, James Baldwin really understood this. — Michael Eric Dyson

There is nothing new about poverty. What is new, however, is that we have the resources to get rid of it. — Martin Luther King Jr.

I am thankful, however, that some of our white brothers have grasped the meaning of this social revolution and committed themselves to it. They are still all too small in quantity, but they are big in quality. — Martin Luther King Jr.

Christ furnished the spirit and motivation while Gandhi furnished the method. — Martin Luther King Jr.

In struggling for human dignity the oppressed people of the world must not allow themselves to become bitter or indulge in hate campaigns. To retaliate with hate and bitterness would do nothing but intensify the hate in the world. Along the way of life, someone must have sense enough and morality enough to cut off the chain of hate. This can be done only by projecting the ethics of love to the center of our lives. — Martin Luther King Jr.

Riots are the voices of the unheard. — Martin Luther King Jr.

Anyone who wants to prevent you from making other people happy is an enemy. If you are stopping yourself from making others happy, you are your own enemy. — Israelmore Ayivor

I love Louisiana fried fish, but it's all Martin Luther King, I can't go over there. — Vince Staples

Faith is taking the first step when you don't see the whole staircase. — Martin Luther King Jr.

I could never adjust to the separate waiting rooms, separate eating places, separate rest rooms, partly because the separate was always unequal, and partly because the very idea of separation did something to my sense of dignity and self-respect. — Martin Luther King Jr.

When we see social relationships controlled everywhere by the principles which Jesus illustrated in life
trust, love, mercy, and altruism
then we shall know that the kingdom of God is here. — Martin Luther King Jr.

We aren't going to let any mace stop us. We are masters in our nonviolent movement in disarming police forces; they don't know what to do. — Martin Luther King Jr.

In the final analysis the weakness of Black Power is its failure to see that the black man needs the white man and the white man needs the black man. — Martin Luther King Jr.

With the tough mind, there must also be a tender heart. — Martin Luther King Jr.

Not ordinarily do men achieve this balance of opposites. The idealists are not usually realistic, and the realists are not usually idealistic. The militant are not generally known to be passive, nor the passive to be militant. Seldom are the humble self-assertive, or the self assertive humble ... truth is found neither in the thesis nor the antithesis, but in an emergent synthesis that reconciles the two. — Martin Luther King Jr.

Jesus recognized that love is greater than like, — Martin Luther King Jr.

Only in darkness can you see the stars. -- MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. — Timothy Thacker

So basically
be careful never to be too awesome
or you will be mysteriously executed
just like Martin Luther King
and Gandhi
and Abraham Lincoln
and JFK
and Malcolm X
and Sitting Bull
and Crazy Horse
and... wow
why are we so mean to our best people? — Cory O'Brien

Ten cures for depression are to go out and do something for someone else and repeat it nine times. — Martin Luther King Jr.

The saddest face I ever saw on Martin Luther King was at the funeral of the four little girls slain in Birmingham, Alabama. — James A. Forbes

It is, then, not simply a question of black power or white power, but of how meaningfully to reenfranchise human power. This, as I think Martin Luther King understood, is the real point, the real gift to America, of the struggle of the black people. In accepting the humanity of the black race, the white people will not be giving accommodation to an alien people; it will be receiving into itself half of its own experience, vital and indispensable to it, which it has so far denied at great cost. — Wendell Berry

Had it not been for the ministry of my good friend Dr. Billy Graham, my work in the civil rights movement would not have been as successful as it has been. — Martin Luther King Jr.

It is cheerful to God when you rejoice or laugh from the bottom of your heart. — Martin Luther King Jr.

By its very nature, hate destroys and tears down; by its very nature, love creates and builds up. — Martin Luther King Jr.

It may sound strange, but I get the inspiration for most of my Dreams while I'm sleeping. — Mark W. Boyer

When evil men burn and bomb, good men must build and bind. — Martin Luther King Jr.

Christianity has always insisted that the cross we bear always precedes the crown we wear. — Martin Luther King Jr.

Freedom is one thing. You have it all or you are not free. — Martin Luther King Jr.

But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough, can you see the stars. — Martin Luther King Jr.

Since being in India, I am more convinced than ever before that the method of nonviolent resistance is the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for justice and human dignity. — Martin Luther King Jr.

Evil must be attacked by ... the day to day assault of the battering rams of justice. — Martin Luther King Jr.

I would suffer all the humiliation, all the torture, the absolute ostracism and even death, to prevent violence — Martin Luther King Jr.

To use a telling phrase of the Reverend Martin Luther King, we can say that we have defaulted on a promissory note and now is the time to honor it. — Pope Francis

Violence is anything that denies human integrity, and leads to hopelessness and helplessness. — Martin Luther King Jr.

Many people fear nothing more terribly than to take a position which stands out sharply and clearly from the prevailing opinion. The tendency of most is to adopt a view that is so ambiguous that it will include everything and so popular that it will include everybody. Not a few men who cherish lofty and noble ideals hide them under a bushel for fear of being called different. — Martin Luther King Jr.

[Martin Luther King, Jr.] concluded the learned discourse that came to be known as the 'loving your enemies' sermon this way: 'So this morning, as I look into your eyes and into the eyes of all my brothers in Alabama and all over America and over the world, I say to you,'I love you. I would rather die than hate you.'
Go ahead and reread that. That is hands down the most beautiful, strange, impossible, but most of all radical thing a human being can say. And it comes from reading the most beautiful, strange, impossible, but most of all radical civics lesson ever taught, when Jesus of Nazareth went to a hill in Galilee and told his disciples, 'Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you. — Sarah Vowell

There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right. — Martin Luther King Jr.

It's soul force that removed the English from India. It's soul force that brought down the Berlin Wall. It's soul force that gave life to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s struggle for civil rights. — Marianne Williamson

Hate is too big of burden to bear. I have decided to love. — Martin Luther King Jr.

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

Somewhere somebody must have some sense. Men must see that force begets force, hate begets hate, toughness begets toughness. And it is all a descending spiral, ultimately ending in destruction for all and everybody. Somebody must have sense enough and morality enough to cut off the chain of hate and the chain of evil in the universe. And you do that by love. — Martin Luther King Jr.

We will never have peace in the world until men everywhere recognize that ends are not cut off from means, because the means represent the ideal in the making, and the end in process, and ultimately you can't reach good ends through evil means, because the means represent the seed and the end represents the tree. — Martin Luther King Jr.

We need not join the mad rush to purchase an earthly fallout shelter. God is our eternal fallout shelter. From Strength to Love, 1963 — Martin Luther King Jr.

When the leader grows, the organization grows. — Israelmore Ayivor

Now is the time to make justice a reality for all God's children. — Martin Luther King Jr.

I ain't Martin Luther King. I don't need a dream. I have a plan. — Spike Lee

But I say to you, my friends, there are certain things in our nation and in the world which I am proud to be maladjusted and which I hope all men of good-will will be maladjusted until the good societies realize. — Martin Luther King Jr.

If you can't run then walk If you can't walk then crawl but whatever you do don't give up — Martin Luther King Jr.

I wasn't predicted to be anything. I just followed an inner spirit, and it put me in the right place and the right time. I didn't want to be the mayor of Atlanta. I didn't want to run for Congress. I didn't want to work for Martin Luther King Jr. I wanted to work close to him and be a writer and write about the movement. — Andrew Young

Never, never be afraid to do what is right. Society's punishments are small compared to the wounds we inflict on our souls when we look away. - Martin Luther King Jr — Harsh Mander

I think, along with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks will go down as one of the two most well-known and remembered figures out of the Civil Rights Movement. — Douglas Brinkley

Be true to what you said on paper. — Martin Luther King Jr.

Something should remind us once more that the great things in this universe are things that we never see. — Martin Luther King Jr.

What is more tragic than to see a person who has risen to the disciplined heights of tough-mindedness but has at the same time sunk to the passionless depths of hard-heartedness? — Martin Luther King Jr.

Mass civil disobedience can use rage as a constructive and creative force. — Martin Luther King Jr.

One day the absurdity of the almost universal human belief in the slavery of other animals will be palpable. We shall then have discovered our souls and become worthier of sharing this planet with them. — Martin Luther King Jr.

Stand up for justice, stand up for truth; and God will be at your side forever. — Martin Luther King Jr.

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

And when you discover what you will be in your life, set out to do it as if God Almighty called you at this particular moment in history to do it. Don't just set out to do a good job. — Martin Luther King Jr.

What created democracy was Thomas Paine and Shays' Rebellion, the suffragists and the abolitionists and on down through the populists and the labor movement, including the Wobblies. Tough, in your face people ... Mother Jones, Woody Guthrie ... Martin Luther King and Caesar Chavez. And now it's down to us. — Jim Hightower

Detroit was an exaggeration of what was going on across the country. You could see the divisions, even within the Civil Rights Movement of that period. At the same time that Martin Luther King was talking about his dream, Malcolm X gave his most famous address in Detroit during that same period, "The Message To The Grass Roots," dismissing the notion of integration. — David Maraniss