Martin
Luther King QUOTES
COURAGE
If you lose hope, somehow you lose the vitality that keeps life moving, you lose
that courage to be, that quality that helps you go on in spite of it all. And
so today I still have a dream.
DIVERSITY
"We may have all come on different ships, but we're in the
same boat now."
"We
must learn to live together as brothers, or we are going to perish together as
fools."
"The
hope of a secure and livable world lies with disciplined nonconformists who are
dedicated to justice, peace and brotherhood."
I
look forward confidently to the day when all who work for a living will be one
with no thought to their separateness as Negroes, Jews, Italians or any other
distinctions. This will be the day when we bring into full realization the American
dream -- a dream yet unfulfilled. A dream of equality of opportunity, of privilege
and property widely distributed; a dream of a land where men will not take necessities
from the many to give luxuries to the few; a dream of a land where men will not
argue that the color of a man's skin determines the content of his character;
a dream of a nation where all our gifts and resources are held not for ourselves
alone, but as instruments of service for the rest of humanity; the dream of a
country where every man will respect the dignity and worth of the human personality.
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." I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former
slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at
a table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi,
a desert state, sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be
transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four
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. I have a dream today.
ECONOMY
We must recognize that we can't solve our problems now until there is a radical
redistribution of economic and political power....[What is required is] a radical
restructuring of the architecture of American society.
END
RACISM
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.
"If
the moderates of the white South fail to act now, 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."
In our
struggle against racial segregation in Montgomery, Alabama, I came to see at a
very early stage that a synthesis of Gandhi's method of nonviolence and the Christian
ethic of love is the best weapon available to Negroes for this struggle for freedom
and human dignity. It may well be that the Gandhian approach will bring about
a solution to the race problem in America. His spirit is a continual reminder
to oppressed people that it is possible to resist evil and yet not resort to violence.
We will
have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions
of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people.
FORGIVENESS
In spite of the fact that the law of revenge solves no social problems, men continue
to follow its disastrous leading. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations
and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path."
FREEDOM
When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet,
from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all
of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and
Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual,
'Free at last! free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!'
GLOBALIZATION
When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered
more important than people; the giant triplets of racism, militarism, and economic
exploitation are incapable of being conquered. A true revolution of values will
soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our present policies...
"This
is a role our nation has taken. The role of those who make peaceful revolution
impossible by refusing to give up the priveleges and pleasures that comes from
the immense profits of overseas investments. I'm convinced that if we are to get
on the right side fo the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical
revolution of values. We must rapidly begin to shift from a thing-oriented society
to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and
property rights are considered more important than people; the giant triplets
of racism, militarism, and economic exploitation are incapable of being conquered.
A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice
of many of our present policies... True compassion is more than flinging a coin
to a beggar. A true revolution of values will soon look on uneasily upon the glaring
contrast of poverty and wealth with righteous indignation. It will look across
the seas and see individual capitalists of the West invest in huge sums of money
in Asia, Africa, and South America only to take the profits out with no concern
for the social betterment of the countries, and say 'this is not just'. It will
look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say 'this is
not just'. Western arrogance of feeling it has everything to teach others, and
nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands
on the world order and say of war: 'This way of settling differences is not just.'
This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes
with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people
normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically
handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice
and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military
defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."
HEALTH
Of all of the forms of inequality, injustice in health is the most shocking and
the most inhumane.
HOPE
We must accept finite disappointment, but we must never lose infinite hope.
If
you lose hope, somehow you lose the vitality that keeps life moving, you lose
that courage to be, that quality that helps you go on in spite of it all. And
so today I still have a dream.
"We
must use time creatively — and forever realize that the time is always to hope
to do great things."
HUMAN
RIGHTS
Whatever career you may choose for yourself - doctor, lawyer, teacher
- let me propose an avocation to be pursued along with it. Become a dedicated
fighter for civil rights. Make it a central part of your life. It will make you
a better doctor, a better lawyer, a better teacher. It will enrich your spirit
as nothing else possibly can. It will give you that rare sense of nobility that
can only spring from love and selflessly helping your fellow man. Make a career
of humanity. Commit yourself to the noble struggle for human rights. You will
make a greater person of yourself, a greater nation of your country and a finer
world to live in."
INTERCONNECTION
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.
JUSTICE
"The hope of a secure and livable world lies with disciplined nonconformists who
are dedicated to justice, peace and brotherhood."
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.
Philanthropy
is commendable, but it must not cause the philanthropist to overlook the circumstances
of economic injustice which make philanthrophy necessary.
LABOR
In our glorious fight for civil rights, we must guard against being fooled by
false slogans, as 'right-to-work.' It provides no 'rights' and no 'works.' Its
purpose is to destroy labor unions and the freedom of collective bargaining...
We demand this fraud be stopped.
"All
labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken
with painstaking excellence."
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.
LIVING
A LIFE OF COMPASSION
"Life's most persistent and urgent question is, What
are you doing for others?"
"The
hope of a secure and livable world lies with disciplined nonconformists who are
dedicated to justice, peace and brotherhood."
Cowardice
asks the question: is it safe? Expediency asks the question: is it politic? Vanity
asks the question: is it popular? But conscience asks the question: is it right?
And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor
politic, nor popular- but one must take it simply because it is right.
The time is always
right to do what is right.
Take
the first step in faith. You don't have to see the whole staircase, just take
the first step.
"There
are some things concerning which we must always be maladjusted if we are to be
people of good will. We must never adjust ourselves to racial segregation. We
must never adjust ourselves to religious bigotry. We must never adjust ourselves
to economic conditions that take necessities from the many to give luxuries to
the few.”
LOVE
"Love is the only force capable of turning an enemy into a friend."
Darkness
cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate;
only love can do that.
"At
the center of non-violence stands the principle of love.
Sooner
or later all the peoples of the world will have to discover a way to live together
in peace, and thereby transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm
of brotherhood. If this is to be achieved man must evolve for all human conflict
a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of
such a method is love.
NONVIOLENCE
"The nonviolent approach does not immediately change the heart of the oppressor.
It first does something to the hearts and souls of those committed to it. It gives
them new self-respect; it calls up resources of strength and courage that they
did not know they had. Finally it reaches the opponent and so stirs his conscience
that reconciliation becomes a reality."
"The
principle of nonviolent resistance seeks to reconcile the truths of two opposites
- acquiescence and violence - while avoiding the extremes and immoralities of
both. The nonviolent resister agress with the person who acquisces that one should
not be physically agressive toward his opponent; but he balances the equation
by agreeing with the person of violence that evil must be resisted. He avoids
the nonresistance of the former and the violent resistance of the latter. With
nonviolent resistance, no invidual or group need to submit to any wrong, nor need
anyone resort to violence in order to right a wrong."
Nonviolence
is the answer to the crucial political moral questions of our time.
We
must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline.
We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again
and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with
soul force.
Nonviolence
is not sterile passivity, but a powerful moral force which makes for social transformation.
We
still have a choice today: nonviolence coesistence or violent coannihilation.
Civilization
and violence are antithetical concepts.
[nonviolence]
seeks to secure moral ends through moral means.
Nonviolence
is a powerful and just weapon. Indeed it is a weapon unique in history, which
cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it.
World
peace through non-violent means is neither absurd nor unattainable. All other
methods have failed. Thus we must begin anew. Non-violence is a good starting
point. Those of us who believe in this method can be voices of reason, sanity
and understanding amid the voices of violence, hatred and emotion. We can very
well set a mood of peace out of which a system of peace can be built. Racial injustice
around the world. Poverty. War. When man solves these three great problems he
will have squared his moral progress with his scientific progress. And more importantly,
he will have learned the practical art of living in harmony.
NO
MORE WAR
"The past is prophetic in that it asserts loudly that wars are
poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows."
PEACE
So we must fix our vision not merely on the negative expulsion of war, but upon
the positive affirmation of peace.
Somehow
we must transform the dynamics of the world power struggle from the negative nuclear
arms race which no one can win to a positive contest to harness man's creative
genius for the purpose of making peace and prosperity a reality for all of the
nations of the world.
We
must shift the arms race into a 'peace race'.
"One
of the most persistent ambiguities that we face is that everybody talks about
peace as a goal. However, it does not take sharpest-eyed sophistication to discern
that while everbody talks about peace, peace has become practically nobody's business
among the power-wielders. Many men cry Peace! Peace! but they refuse to do the
things that make for peace."
"It
is not enough to say 'We must not wage war.' It is necessary to love peace and
sacrifice for it … We must see that peace represents a sweeter music, a cosmic
melody that is far superior to the discord of war."
Peace
is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that
goal.
One
day we must come to see that peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek,
but that it is a means by which we arrive at that goal. We must pursue peaceful
ends through peaceful means.
We
will not build a peaceful world by following a negative path. It is not enough
to say we must not wage war. It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it.
We must concentrate not merely on the negative expulsion of war but on the positive
affirmation of peace. We must see that peace represents a sweeter music, a cosmic
melody, that is far superior to the discords of war. Somehow, we must transform
the dynamics of the world power struggle from the negative nuclear arms race,
which no one can win, to a positive contest to harness humanity's creative genius
for the purpose of making peace and prosperity a reality for all the nations of
the world. In short, we must shift the arms race into a peace race. If we have
a will - and determination - to mount such a peace offensive, we will unlock hitherto
tightly sealed doors of hope and transform our imminent cosmic elegy into a psalm
of creative fulfillment.
"True
peace is not merely the absence of tension but is the presence of justice and
brotherhood."
POPULATION
"Unlike plagues of the dark ages or contemporary diseases we do not understand,
the modern plague of overpopulation is soluble by means we have discovered and
with resources we posses. 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 victim."
POVERTY
True compassion is more than flinging a coin at a beggar; it comes to see that
an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.
"The
curse of poverty has no justification in our age. The time has come for us to
civilise ourselves by the total, direct and immediate abolition of poverty."
"We
have ancient habits to deal with, vast structures of power, indescribably complicated
problems to solve. But unless we abdicate our humanity altogether and succumb
to fear and impotence in the presence of the weapons we have ourselves created,
it is as possible and as urgent to put an end to war and violence between nations
as it is to put an end to poverty and racial injustice."
We
have moved into an era where we are called upon to raise certain basic questions
about the whole society. We are still called upon to give aid to the beggar who
finds himself in misery and agony on life's highway. But one day, we must ask
the question of whether an edifice which produces beggars must not be restructured
and refurbished.
There
is nothing new about poverty. What is new is that we now have the techniques and
the resources to get rid of poverty. The real question is whether we have the
will.
The
poorest people in our country today, on the whole, are working every day. But
they are earning wages so low that they cannot begin to function in the mainstream
of the economic life of our nation. We have thousands and thousands of people
working on full-time jobs, with part-time incomes.
VOLUNTEER
Everyone can be great, because everyone can serve.
WE
CAN CREATE A BETTER WORLD
Somehow
we must transform the dynamics of the world power struggle from the negative nuclear
arms race which no one can win to a positive contest to harness man's creative
genius for the purpose of making peace and prosperity a reality for all of the
nations of the world.
