Martin Luther King, Jr Quotes

All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.

Martin Luther King, Jr

Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a mans 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.

Martin Luther King, Jr

Now, I say to you today my friends, even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed - We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.

Martin Luther King, Jr

If you will protest courageously, and yet with dignity and Christian love, when the history books are written in future generations, the historians will have to pause and say, There lived a great people-a black people-who injected new meaning and dignity into the veins of civilization.

Martin Luther King, Jr

Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.

Martin Luther King, Jr

The good neighbor looks beyond the external accidents and discerns those inner qualities that make all men human and, therefore, brothers.

Martin Luther King, Jr

Hatred paralyzes life love releases it. Hatred confuses life love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life love illumines it.

Martin Luther King, Jr

Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.

Martin Luther King, Jr

I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. That is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.

Martin Luther King, Jr

I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negros great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to order than to justice who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice who constantly says I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for someone elses freedom who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a more convenient season.

Martin Luther King, Jr

In no sense do I advocate evading or defying the law That would lead to anarchy. An individual who breaks a law that his 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.

Martin Luther King, Jr

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.

Martin Luther King, Jr

We may have all come on different ships, but were in the same boat now.

Martin Luther King, Jr

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.

Martin Luther King, Jr

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 down together at the table of brotherhood.

Martin Luther King, Jr

We shall have to repent in this generation , not so much for the evil deeds of the wicked people, but for the appalling silence of the good people.

Martin Luther King, Jr

When you are right you cannot be too radical when you are wrong, you cannot be too conservative.

Martin Luther King, Jr

In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.

Martin Luther King, Jr

Darkness cannot drive out darkness only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate only love can do that.

Martin Luther King, Jr

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.

Martin Luther King, Jr