Quotes / Thinkers / Martin Luther King Jr.
Thinker · 32 quotes
32 sourced quotes by Martin Luther King Jr. on peace, non-violence & conflict, justice & rule of law, equality & social justice, ethics & morality, courage, with a use case for each in GS4, Essay and interviews.
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The time is always right to do what's right.
Let us be dissatisfied until America will no longer have a high blood pressure of creeds and an anemia of deeds.
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. The true neighbor will risk his position, his prestige and even his life for the welfare of others.
Be concerned about your brother. You may not be on strike. But either we go up together, or we go down together.
In short, over the last ten years the Negro decided to straighten his back up, realizing that a man cannot ride your back unless it is bent.
The hope of a secure and livable world lies with disciplined nonconformists, who are dedicated to justice, peace, and brotherhood. The trailblazers in human, academic, scientific, and religious freedom have always been nonconformists. In any cause that concerns the progress of mankind, put your faith in the nonconformist!
Ultimately a genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus, but a molder of consensus.
Above all he did not content himself with hurling invectives for emotional release and then to retire into smug, passive satisfaction. History had taught him it is not enough for people to be angry — the supreme task is to organize and unite people so that their anger becomes a transforming force.
True greatness comes not by favoritism, but by fitness.
The best way to solve any problem is to remove the cause.
How long? Not long, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. Therefore, no American can afford to be apathetic about the problem of racial justice. It is a problem that meets every man at his front door.
An unjust law is a code that a majority inflicts on a minority that is not binding on itself. This is difference made legal. On the other hand a just law is a code that a majority compels a minority to follow that it is willing to follow itself. This is sameness made legal.
It is a trite yet urgently true observation that if America is to remain a first-class nation, it cannot have second-class citizens.
It is one of the strange ironies of history, that in a nation founded on the principle that all men are created equal, men are still arguing over whether the color of a man's skin determines the content of his character.
Whenever racial discrimination exists it is a tragic expression of man's spiritual degeneracy and moral bankruptcy. Therefore, it must be removed not merely because it is diplomatically expedient, but because it is morally compelling.
What is lacking is not sufficient knowledge of the solution but universal consciousness of the gravity of the problem and education of the billions who are its victims.
The means by which we live have outdistanced the ends for which we live. Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided man.
Call it democracy, or call it democratic socialism, but there must be a better distribution of wealth within this country for all God's children.
This man talked like he could build the barns by himself, like he could till the soil by himself. And he failed to realize that wealth is always a result of the commonwealth.
Nonviolent resistance is not aimed against oppressors, but against oppression.
True peace is not merely the absence of tension: it is the presence of justice.
We must all learn to live together as brothers — or we will all perish together as fools. This is the great issue facing us today. No individual can live alone; no nation can live alone. We are tied together.
We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. And history is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate.
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
And any religion that professes to be concerned about the souls of men and is not concerned about the slums that cripple the souls — the economic conditions that stagnate the soul and the city governments that may damn the soul — is a dry, dead, do-nothing religion in need of new blood.
We must set out to do a good job irrespective of race. We must seek to do our life's work so well that nobody could do it better.
We must keep moving. If you can't fly, run; if you can't run, walk; if you can't walk, crawl; but by all means keep moving.
One of the sure signs of maturity is the ability to rise to the point of self criticism.
Let no man pull you so low as to hate him.
Doors are opening now that were not open in the past, and the great challenge facing minority groups is to be ready to enter these doors as they open. No greater tragedy could befall us at this hour but that of allowing new opportunities to emerge with out the concomitant preparedness to meet them.
Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in healthcare is the most shocking and inhumane.