Martin Luther King, Jr.

• We must use time creatively.
• We are not makers of history. We are made by history.
• When you are right you cannot be too radical; when you are wrong, you cannot be too conservative.
• The past is prophetic in that it asserts loudly that wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.
• We have guided missiles and misguided men.
• 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.
• Seeing does not always believe.
• Means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek.
• Wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.
• We must concentrate not merely on the negative expulsion of war but the positive affirmation of peace.
• It is not enough to say we must not wage war. It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it.
• I just want to do God's will. And he's allowed me to go to the mountain. And I've looked over, and I've seen the Promised Land! I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the Promised Land.
• I want to be the white man's brother, not his brother-in-law.
• One of the greatest casualties of the war in Vietnam is the Great Society... shot down on the battlefield of Vietnam.
• War is a poor chisel to carve out tomorrow.
• There is nothing more tragic than to find an individual bogged down in the length of life, devoid of breadth.
• The sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality.
• Law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress.
• Have we not come to such an impasse in the modern world that we must love our enemies - or else? The chain reaction of evil - hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars - must be broken, or else we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.
• We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people.
• 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.
• One who breaks an unjust 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 law.
• The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be... The nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.
• I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit together at the table of brotherhood.
• Philanthropy is commendable, but it must not cause the philanthropist to overlook the circumstances of economic injustice which make philanthropy necessary.
• Discrimination is a hellhound that gnaws at Negroes in every waking moment of their lives to remind them that the lie of their inferiority is accepted as truth in the society dominating them.
• 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 men.
• If physical death is the price that I must pay to free my white brothers and sisters from a permanent death of the spirit, then nothing can be more redemptive.
• The limitation of riots, moral questions aside, is that they cannot win and their participants know it. Hence, rioting is not revolutionary but reactionary because it invites defeat. It involves an emotional catharsis, but it must be followed by a sense of futility.
• Pity may represent little more than the impersonal concern which prompts the mailing of a check, but true sympathy is the personal concern which demands the giving of one's soul.
• Property is intended to serve life, and no matter how much we surround it with rights and respect, it has no personal being. It is part of the earth man walks on. It is not man.
• Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
• I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.
• 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.
• Faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the whole staircase.
• 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.
• Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
• We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. 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.
• Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.
• In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.
• Take the first step in faith. You don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.
• Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can't ride you unless your back is bent.
• The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character - that is the goal of true education.
• A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.
• 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.
• Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.
• 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.
• A man who won't die for something is not fit to live.
• We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.
• A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a moulder of consensus.
• Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.
• Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable... Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.
• History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.
• I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.
• We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.
• I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made straight and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.
• The moral arc of the universe bends at the elbow of justice.
• The Negro needs the white man to free him from his fears. The white man needs the Negro to free him from his guilt.
• I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality... I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.
• Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into friend.
• Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
• Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal.
• All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.
• 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.
• Nothing in the entire world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
• We who in engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive.
• I submit that an individual who breaks the law that conscience tells him is unjust and willingly accepts the penalty by staying in jail to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the very highest respect for law.
• It is incontestable and deplorable that Negroes have committed crimes; but they are derivative crimes. They are born of the greater crimes of the white society.
• Life's most persistent and urgent question is, 'What are you doing for others?'
• The time is always right to do what is right.
• A man can't ride your back unless it's bent.
• There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love.
• A lie cannot live.
• The hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who remain neutral in times of great moral conflict.
• Whatever your life's work is does it well. A man should do his job so well that the living, the dead, and the unborn could do it no better.
• A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on the instalment plan.
• The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.
• 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.
• Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.
• 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?'
• That old law about 'an eye for an eye' leaves everybody blind. The time is always right to do the right thing.
• Almost always, the creative dedicated minority has made the world better.
• Never succumb to the temptation of bitterness.
• Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it. It is a sword that heals.
• If we are to go forward, we must go back and rediscover those precious values - that all reality hinges on moral foundations and that all reality has spiritual control.
• The quality, not the longevity, of one's life is what is important.
• Everything that we see is a shadow cast by that which we do not see.
• The hope of a secure and liveable world lies with disciplined nonconformists who are dedicated to justice, peace and brotherhood.
• It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important.
• At the center of non-violence stands the principle of love.
• 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.
• If a man hasn't discovered something that he will die for, he isn't fit to live.
• We must build dikes of courage to hold back the flood of fear.
• A right delayed is a right denied.
• The art of acceptance is the art of making someone who has just done you a small favor wish that he might have done you a greater one.
• Science investigates religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge which is power religion gives man wisdom which is control.
• All progress is precarious, and the solution of one problem brings us face to face with another problem.
• 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.
• A riot is the language of the unheard.
• I submit to you that if a man hasn't discovered something that he will die for, he isn't fit to live.
• Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal.
• We may have all come on different ships, but we're in the same boat now.
• Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.
• Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.