Top 100 King Martin Luther Quotes
#1. It is a tragic mix-up when the United States spends 500,000 for every enemy soldier killed, and only 53 annually on the victims of poverty.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#3. The non-violent resistor not only avoids external, physical violence, but he avoids internal violence of spirit. He not only refuses to shoot his opponent, but he refuses to hate him. And he stands with understanding, goodwill at all times.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#5. The leader's commandment is made up of pledges to solve local and global problems, and not to create more problems to add to the existing ones.
Israelmore Ayivor
#7. If Martin Luther King were here he'd be very surprised at some of the sugar-coated versions of American history presented today.
Kwasi Kwarteng
#8. All progress is precarious, and the solution of one problem brings us face to face with another problem.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#10. Without denying the value of scientific endeavor, there is a striking absurdity in committing billions to reach the moon where no people live, while only a fraction of that amount is appropriated to service the densely populated slums.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#12. As a sign of utmost gratitude for his contributions to the Indian society in restoring equal rights of the citizens, I confer him (B.R. Ambedkar) the title "Martin Luther King Jr. of India.
Abhijit Naskar
#14. 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.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#16. 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.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#17. Personality is like a charioteer with two headstrong horses, each wanting to go in different directions.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#18. I have a dream, one dream, keep dreaming. Dream of freedom, justice dreaming, dreaming of equality and hopefully no longer required to dream them
Martin Luther King Jr.
#19. The oppressed must never allow the conscience of the oppressor to slumber. Religion reminds every man that he is his brother's keeper.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#20. If Martin Luther King came back, he'd say we need another civil rights movement built on class not race.
Henry Louis Gates
#21. You will change your mind; You will change your looks; You will change your smile,laugh, and ways but no matter what you change, you will always be you
Martin Luther King Jr.
#24. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that ' an unjust law is no law at all.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#25. I grew up in Ohio, where civil-rights accomplishments had already begun to accelerate before Martin Luther King appeared. In hindsight, we know that many people, black and white, were instrumental in changing the Jim Crow status quo on all levels.
Rita Dove
#27. The rage was in me, and if it wasn't for the rage, then I wouldn't know how to be calm. They feed off of each other. Just like when Malcolm X fed off Martin Luther King. They needed each other.
Gary Sheffield
#28. 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.
#29. It is good to exercise patience. But never let your patience be the type that will keep you refrained from acting.
Israelmore Ayivor
#30. The first principle of value that we need to rediscover is this: that all reality hinges on moral foundations. In other words, that this is a moral universe, and that there are moral laws of the universe just as abiding as the physical laws. (from "Rediscovering Lost Values")
Martin Luther King Jr.
#31. Changing the world doesn't require much money. Again, think in terms of empowerment and not charity. How much were Gandhi's teachers paid? How much did it cost to give Dr. Martin Luther King the books that catalyzed his mind and actions?
Tim Ferriss
#32. There is nothing more tragic in all the world than to know right and not to do it.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#33. I was in the kitchen drinking coffee when I heard Coretta cry, "Martin, Martin, come quickly!" I put down my cup and ran toward the living room. As I approached the front window Coretta pointed joyfully to a slowly moving bus: "Darling, it's empty!
Martin Luther King Jr.
#34. In the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., "No lie will last forever." We have to work at removing lies from our own hearts. And on the national level, we do this not because we blame our country, but because we love it.
Marianne Williamson
#35. And so we shall have to do more than register and more than vote; we shall have to create leaders who embody virtues we can respect, who have moral and ethical principles we can applaud with enthusiasm.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#37. The Negro has no room to make any substantial compromises because his store of advantages is too small. He must press unrelentingly for quality, integrated education or his whole drive for freedom will be undermined by the absence of a most vital and indispensable element - learning.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#38. I think that not only do saints make poor role models, they are incapable in one sense of identifying radically with those of us who are mere mortals. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s mortality says to us that here's a figure who got up every day of his life facing tremendous odds and yet overcame them.
Michael Eric Dyson
#40. By its very nature, hate destroys and tears down; by its very nature, love creates and builds up.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#41. We must have the faith that things will work out somehow, that God will make a way for us when there seems no way.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#42. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#43. We can dream of an America, and a world, in which love and not money are civilization's bottom line.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#44. Our slogan must not be "Burn, baby, burn." It must be, "Build, baby, build." "Organize, baby, organize." Yes, our slogan must be "Learn, baby, learn," so that we can earn, baby, earn.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#45. I have a dream!
To be free at last!
Free at last!
Free at last.
And if a man has nothing to die for,
Then his life is worth nothing.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#47. We all have to be concerned about terrorism, but you will never end terrorism by terrorizing others.
Martin Luther King III
#48. 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.
#49. I am indebted to my wife Coretta, without whose love, sacrifices, and loyalty neither life nor work would bring fulfillment. She has given me words of consolation when I needed them and a well-ordered home where #Christian love is a reality.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#50. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#51. We cannot walk alone. And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#52. 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.
#53. When any society says that I cannot marry a certain person, that society has cut off a segment of my freedom,
Martin Luther King Jr.
#54. If America does not use her vast resources of wealth to end poverty and make it possible for all of God's children to have the basic necessities of life, she too will go to hell.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#55. There are two types of laws: there are just laws and there are unjust laws ... What is the difference between the two? ... An unjust law is a man-made code that is out of harmony with the moral law.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#56. It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tired into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one destiny, affects all indirectly.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#57. We don't really know who killed Martin Luther King. We don't really know who killed Bobby Kennedy. We don't really know who killed John Kennedy. We don't really know who killed Tupac Shakur.
Cynthia McKinney
#59. If the inexpressible cruelties of slavery could not stop us, the opposition we now face will surely fail. We will win our freedom because the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of God are embodied in our echoing demands.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#60. 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.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#61. I can only speak for myself, but when I was growing up in Memphis - and having the Martin Luther King holiday and the moment of pause on April 4th - he was just a statue to me. I wanted to make him a little bit more real to me as a human being.
Katori Hall
#62. Let no one drag you so low as to hate them"
-Martin Luther King Jr.
Elle Jefferson
#63. A second basic fact that characterizes nonviolence is that it does not seek to defeat or humiliate the opponent, but to win his friendship and understanding.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#64. I have a dream that one day little black boys and girls will be holding hands with little white boys and girls.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#65. I have never had a secret hero in my mind but I have kept a lot of mentors in my mind that are heroes. Gandhi, Jesus, Moses, Martin Luther King they were all secret heroes in my mind because they stood for what they wanted, what they believed in.
John Assaraf
#66. Another reason why we must love our enemies is that hate scars the soul and distorts the personality.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#67. 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
#68. The leaders who we admire who have been able to bring great change in the past - Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela - they're all inspirational religious leaders and smart tacticians. It would be nice to find the Muslim Gandhi, wouldn't it?
Dennis C. Blair
#70. I have a dream. I have a dream that one day, people will be judged by the content of their character, not by the color of their skin.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#72. When we rise in the morning ... at the table we drink coffee which is provided to us by a South American, or tea by a Chinese, or cocoa by a West African; before we leave for our jobs we are already beholden to more than half the world.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#73. Whenever men and women straighten their backs up, they are going somewhere, because a man can't ride your back unless it is bent
Martin Luther King Jr.
#74. [Nonviolence] is directed against forces of evil rather than against persons who happen to be doing the evil. It is evil that the nonviolent resister seeks to defeat, not the persons victimized by evil.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#77. A society is always eager to cover misdeeds with a cloak of forgetfulness, but no society can fully repress an ugly past when the ravages persist into the present. America owes a debt of justice which it has only begun to pay.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#79. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#81. If Rosa Parks had not refused to move to the back of the bus, you and I might never have heard of Dr. Martin Luther King.
Ramsey Clark
#82. The true measure of a man is not how he behaves in moments of comfort and convenience but how he stands at times of controversy and challenges.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#83. My uncertainty disappeared. Segregation is evil, and I cannot, as a minister, condone evil.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#84. The good and just society is neither the thesis of capitalism nor the antithesis of communism, but a socially conscious democracy which reconciles the truths of individualism and collectivism
Martin Luther King Jr.
#85. I want my kids to know that they're just as good and just as American as Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, or Dr. Martin Luther King. My worst fear is they will become ordinary.
Rafe Esquith
#88. The three biggest funerals in Alabama history define the state's contending loyalties, I was told: George Wallace's, Martin Luther King's, and Bear Bryant's.
Paul Theroux
#89. Segregation ... not only harms one physically but injures one spiritually ... It scars the soul ... It is a system which forever stares the segregated in the face, saying 'You are less than ... 'You are not equal to ... '
Martin Luther King Jr.
#90. I was born after the Civil Rights Movement. I never saw Martin Luther King alive.
Cory Booker
#91. So when Jesus says "Love your enemies," he is setting forth a profound and ultimately inescapable admonition.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#92. The heroes of my childhood were Martin Luther King Jr. and John F. Kennedy ... but I was inspired by the ideals of our 40th president and became a Republican.
Mike Pence
#93. Pigmentation was a quick and convenient way of judging a person. One of us, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., once proposed we instead judge people by the content of their character. He was shot.
Jon Stewart
#94. He [Martin Luther King Jr.] always used to say you have no choice about being born or dying. The only thing you have a choice about is what you die for.
Andrew Young
#95. Only God is able. It is faith in Him that we must rediscover. With this faith we can transform bleak and desolate valleys into sunlit paths of joy and bring new light into the dark caverns of pessimism.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#96. Using references of current technology, Martin Luther King Jr. could mentally cut and paste better than any individual I have ever known.
Clarence Benjamin Jones
#97. The choice is not between violence and nonviolence but between nonviolence and nonexistence.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#98. If you want to be important-wonderful. If you want to be recognized-wonderful. If you want to be great-wonderful. But recognize that he who is greatest among you shall be your servant. That's a new definition of greatness.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#99. Science investigates; religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge, which is power; religion gives man wisdom, which is control. Science deals mainly with facts; religion deals mainly with values. The two are not rivals.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#100. We will not build a peaceful world by following a negative path. It is not enough to say we will 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
Martin Luther King Jr.
