Top 100 Luther Martin King Quotes
#1. Martin Luther King Jr's agenda was not to help Negroes overcome American apartheid in the south. It was to make America democracy a better place, where everyday people, from poor people who were white and red and yellow and black and brown, would be able to live lives in decency and dignity.
Cornel West
#2. I'm hungry for knowledge. The whole thing is to learn every day, to get brighter and brighter. That's what this world is about. You look at someone like Gandhi, and he glowed. Martin Luther King glowed. Muhammad Ali glows. I think that's from being bright all the time, and trying to be brighter.
Jay-Z
#3. Even after facing jail, Martin Luther King, Jr. courageously and boldly spoke out against racial inequality.
Yvette Clarke
#4. Since the day Martin Luther King was killed, the black middle classes have almost quadrupled, but the percentage of black children living on or below the poverty line is almost the same.
Henry Louis Gates
#5. Ruth does love Jesus, same way she loves Lincoln, Robin Hood, Martin Luther King, and Nat. Handsome men who fight for justice.
Samantha Hunt
#6. There's a natural tendency to sanitize and polish any historical icon whether it be George Washington chopping down the cherry tree or Martin Luther King saying, "I have a dream."
Taylor Branch
#7. One of the first steps to successful leadership is to forget your age and remember your dream.
Israelmore Ayivor
#8. My all-time heroes are Thurgood Marshall and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., two men who had to really work to achieve what they did. And I had the privilege of meeting them both.
Monte Irvin
#10. Hatred is a burden that can hunt you day by day, robbing you off your personal joy in broad day light.
Israelmore Ayivor
#11. Harbour no hatred in your heart against anyone. People who do this have placed their influence on the risky line.
Israelmore Ayivor
#12. Inspiration thing is important, to teach the kids that JFK is not an airport, RFK's not a stadium, Martin Luther King ain't a street
Kinky Friedman
#13. A calling is you feel - you look out and see the need - maybe it's the need for the poor, to help poor people. Maybe it's the need to get involved in the race problem, as Martin Luther King was - felt called.
Billy Graham
#14. I sound like Jesse Jackson or Martin Luther King, but I honestly feel like the world is mature enough. And, for me, I just want to do good roles.
Marlon Wayans
#15. Watch out; success will only arrive when your action are strong enough to attract them.
Israelmore Ayivor
#17. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream was a manifestation of hope that humanity might one day get out of its own way by finding the courage to realize that love and nonviolence are not indicators of weakness but gifts of significant strength.
Aberjhani
#18. The real meaning of courage was the personal sacrifice of Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King.
Pete Seeger
#19. Martin Luther King was a human being with a brilliant mind, a powerful heart, and insight, and courage and also with a sense of humor. So he was accessible.
Maya Angelou
#20. Well, I was always a bit of a political junkie. Even as a kid I would read biographies of presidents and of civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King and Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington.
John Legend
#21. Leaders make impacts. If your riches don't help you to make impacts, you aren't leading anyone; rather, money is leading you.
Israelmore Ayivor
#22. One of the things about Steve Jobs is that he gives us an opportunity to look at the disjuncture between that world and the world he claimed that Apple represented, the "Think different" world of Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks and Gandhi.
Alex Gibney
#23. Never reject the opportunity to take the first step. The first step is the key to obtaining the experience you have longed for.
Israelmore Ayivor
#24. Neither my great-grandfather an NAACP founder, my grandfather Dr. Martin Luther King, Sr. an NAACP leader, my father Rev. A. D. Williams King, nor my uncle Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. embraced the homosexual agenda that the current NAACP is attempting to label as a civil rights agenda,
Alveda King
#25. We wouldn't be as far along as a country if we didn't take on some of Martin Luther King's ways that he instilled in us.
Rodney King
#26. I grew up in the sixties watching B.B. King and Tito Puente and Miles Davis and Coltrane, everybody, Marvin Gaye, Jimi. And at the same time, with my left eye I was watching Dolores Huerta, Cesar Chavez, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Mother Teresa.
Carlos Santana
#27. It's great having Bruce Springsteen on my show. We have so much in common! We're both from New Jersey, just from different neighborhoods. Sort of like how Martin Luther King and Margaret Mitchell both came from Atlanta. But from different neighborhoods.
Jon Stewart
#28. It's soul force that removed the English from India. It's soul force that brought down the Berlin Wall. It's soul force that gave life to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s struggle for civil rights.
Marianne Williamson
#29. Martin Luther King gave the 'I Have a Dream' speech, not the 'I Have a Plan' speech.
Simon Sinek
#30. John Lennon imagined a world filled with peace and love. Martin Luther King dreamt of a world free from racial discrimination and oppression. The guy who invented the Frisbee, dreamt of a world where people would throw a fat, circular object at each other in order to pass the time. He succeeded.
Jon Lajoie
#31. Martin Luther King was only an activist for 13 years and every year he changed and every year he became more radical. By the end he was calling for revolution. People don't know this because they go to too many prayer breakfasts on his birthday.
Bill Ayers
#32. I would love to meet Martin Luther King. His fearless attitude, leadership, and self-awareness changed our world.
Zulay Henao
#33. Years ago a black man spoke about love and was crucified. Then Martin Luther King spoke about equality and was shot. Can you SEE why?
Daniel Marques
#34. I grew up in the 1960s in Memphis, and my father was a member of the American Civil Liberties Union. I was born three years before Martin Luther King was killed, and I think that history of civil action was something that I had in my blood.
Ira Sachs
#35. Ray Charles' revolutionary approach to music was also reflected in his politics and his deep and abiding commitment to Martin Luther King and the plight of African-Americans. Ray Charles may not have been on the front lines, but he put his money where his mouth was.
Diane Watson
#36. Martin Luther King, with whom I worked very closely, became very distressed when a number of the ministers working for him wanted him to dismiss me from his staff because of my homosexuality.
Bayard Rustin
#37. Obama has little or nothing to do with the civil-rights movement. His roots are in Kenya, and he is shaped far more by anti-colonialism than by anything that Martin Luther King said or did.
Dinesh D'Souza
#38. Martin Luther King said it was time to inject a new dimension of love into the veins of human civilization. I don't think anyone is calling Martin Luther King a New Age woo-woo.
Marianne Williamson
#39. We are now operating a school system in America that's more segregated than at any time since the death of Martin Luther King.
Jonathan Kozol
#40. When I was teaching in the 1960s in Boston, there was a great deal of hope in the air. Martin Luther King Jr. was alive, Malcolm X was alive; great, great leaders were emerging from the southern freedom movement.
Jonathan Kozol
#41. If Martin [Luther King, Jr.]'s philosophy had been embraced and lived out in Iraq and other places, we wouldn't have bin Ladens.
Coretta Scott King
#42. Between what is going on in Iraq and Mumia being locked up unjustly, things going on in Israel, Palestine, we don't really have anyone right now like Gandhi. We don't have anyone like Martin Luther King or Malcolm X anymore. It's really a reference to a vision of hope, like someone like Gandhi.
Vinnie Paz
#43. It defies reason to believe that Martin Luther King, Jr. would march arm in arm with Wall Street hedge fund managers and members of ALEC to lead a struggle for the privatization of public education, the crippling of unions, and the establishment of for-profit schools.
Diane Ravitch
#44. When the media is controlled by people who runs the world, you are only going to get news that they want you to know. They will paint anther's man country's hero a tyrant, a dictator or a murderer and favor the next just to divide and conquer the people.
Henry Johnson Jr
#45. More often than not ... 'Selma' focuses on the one thing we don't expect in a movie about Martin Luther King Jr. - his doubts - and Oyelowo comes through with a deeply felt and quite brilliant performance,
Ty Burr
#46. If you are not going to divorce the status quo, you will give birth to mediocrity.
Israelmore Ayivor
#47. Martin Luther King Jr. called for us to be lovestruck with each other, not colorblind toward each other. To be lovestruck is to care, to have deep compassion, and to be concerned for each and every individual, including the poor and vulnerable.
Michelle Alexander
#48. There is no Jesus without Judas, no Martin Luther King, Jr., without the Klan; no Ali without Joe Frazier; no freedom without tyranny. No wisdom exists that does not include perspective. Relativity is the greatest gift.
Chris Crutcher
#49. While Johns (Martin Luther King's predecessor as pastor in Montgomery) agreed with Dexter's general disdain for emotionalism, he was very fond of traditional spirituals, believing they represented a part of their history they ought to embrace and celebrate.
Troy Jackson
#50. You can decide to refuse to allow people who aim at hating you to achieve their aims.
Israelmore Ayivor
#51. Only in darkness can you see the stars. -- MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.
Timothy Thacker
#52. The Civil Rights Movement, it wasn't just a couple of, you know, superstars like Martin Luther King. It was thousands and thousands - millions, I should say - of people taking risks, becoming leaders in their community.
Barbara Ehrenreich
#53. And they are torturing Muslims, and their drones are bombing wedding parties (by accident!), and the Dreamers are quoting Martin Luther King and exulting nonviolence for the weak and the biggest guns for the strong.
Ta-Nehisi Coates
#54. In 1999, I was in St. Louis with Martin Luther King III as we led protests against the state's failure to hire minority contractors for highway construction projects. We went at dawn on a summer day with over a thousand people and performed acts of civil disobedience.
Al Sharpton
#55. It is the church's job, as Dr.[Martin Luther] King says, to be the conscience of the state, not the chaplain of the state.
Shane Claiborne
#56. The idea that America elected a black man to be its president forty years after it declined to allow Martin Luther King Jr. to stand on a balcony without getting shot still maintains its power to awe and inspire.
Charlie Pierce
#57. Leadership is self-made. People who have deliberately decided to become problems solver lead better.
Israelmore Ayivor
#58. Never take tiny dreams for granted. They contain giant success stories.
Israelmore Ayivor
#59. A lot of people are waiting for Martin Luther King or Mahatma Gandhi to come back-but they are gone. We are it. It is up to us. It is up to you.
Marian Wright Edelman
#60. Martin Luther King, Jr., would have been the last person to have wanted his iconization and his heroism. He was an enormously guilt-laden man. He was drenched in a sense of shame about his being featured as the preeminent leader of African-American culture and the civil rights movement.
Michael Eric Dyson
#61. I filed a brief as a friend of the court in the U. of Michigan to keep affirmative action at the U. of Michigan, which I attended the law school. And I was one of the original sponsors of making the Martin Luther King birthday a federal holiday.
Dick Gephardt
#62. Everyone knows, even the smallest kid knows about Martin Luther King Jr., can say his most famous moment was that 'I have a dream speech. No one can go further than one sentence. All we know is that this had a dream. We do not know what the dream was'.
Henry Louis Taylor Jr.
#63. If we celebrate Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday at a time of presidential inaugurals, this is thanks to Ronald Reagan who created the holiday, and not to the Democratic Congress of the Carter years, which rejected it.
David Horowitz
#64. I want to play Martin Luther King. I want to tell the real story, his demons, his struggles as a man, not just as a hero but fallible, I want to show that side.
Columbus Short
#65. The White man pays Reverend Martin Luther King so that Martin Luther King can keep the Negro defenseless.
Malcolm X
#66. I realized that my grandfather walked with Martin Luther King forty years ago. That was his dream. And in his little way, he helped us get closer to where we are today.
Tim Daly
#67. Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, the Kennedys - there is always a pattern where a piece of information is destroyed, in which a witness is killed. It's so predictable, you can go back and look up old cases.
Mae Brussell
#68. I hope that the opening of the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial will be a life-altering experience that inspires every American to rededicate themselves to the fulfillment of Dr. King's dream.
Yvette Clarke
#69. Dr. Martin Luther King is not a black hero. He is an American hero
Morgan Freeman
#70. I must personally say that I do question the sincerity and nonviolent intentions of some civil rights leaders such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Mr. James Farmer, and others, who are known to have left-wing associations.
Jerry Falwell
#71. Some people in the church, like Martin Luther King, Jr., came out against segregation. But if you look at the bulk of organized religion, you will discover that it endorsed slavery and quoted the Bible to approve it; the Pope even owned slaves.
John Shelby Spong
#72. Martin Luther King's 'I Have a Dream' speech always sends me down some path, some trajectory of some creative idea.
Abigail Washburn
#73. I was born after the Civil Rights Movement. I never saw Martin Luther King alive.
Cory Booker
#74. 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
#75. 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
#76. Whatever you want is behind the mountain of struggles. Nothing great comes with ease.
Israelmore Ayivor
#77. One individual can begin a movement that turns the tide of history. Martin Luther King in the civil rights movement, Mohandas Ganhi in India, Nelson Mandela in South Africa are examples of people standing up with courage and non-violence to bring about needed changes.
Jack Canfield
#78. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is one of my personal heroes.
Ken Salazar
#79. I think hip-hop has definitely brought the black experience to white kids more than the civil rights movement did and more than any teacher's well-intentioned lecture on Martin Luther King did.
Henry Rollins
#80. In our times, significantly, the three outstanding voices against violence have been silenced by murder - Mahatma Gandhi in India, Archbishop Romero in El Salvador, and Dr. Martin Luther King, here at home.
Millicent Fenwick
#82. Some people think that [it was] Martin Luther King Jr.'s idea to have a boycott. It was a black woman, a teacher, who said we should boycott the buses. You had people like Fannie Lou Hamer; Delta, Mississippi.
John Lewis
#83. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is a time to honor the greatest champion of racial equality who taught a nation - through compassion and courage - about democracy, nonviolence and racial justice.
Mark Pryor
#84. I'm excited about my own network, BounceTV. It's the first African-American-owned broadcast network. It's myself, my partner Rob Hardy, and some other African-American businessmen, including Andrew Young and Martin Luther King III.
Will Packer
#85. Since you can't be influence by people who hate you, you cannot influence people you hate also.
Israelmore Ayivor
#86. Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King are great examples of fantastic nonviolents who died violently. I can never work that out. We're pacifists, but I'm not sure what it means when you're such a pacifist that you get shot. I can never understand that.
John Lennon
#87. Rosa Parks sat so Martin Luther King could walk. Martin Luther King walked so Obama could run. Obama's running so we all can fly.
Jay-Z
#88. As Martin Luther King Jr. prophesied, "I believe what the self-centered have torn down, the other-centered will build up.
Mark Nepo
#89. 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
#90. The active minority in the world is the fraction that makes the world a better place for the passive majority.
Israelmore Ayivor
#91. Love people who hate you and their hatred won't get grounds to gain roots.
Israelmore Ayivor
#92. Racial caste systems do not require racial hostility or overt bigotry to thrive. They need only racial indifference, as Martin Luther King Jr. warned more than forty-five years ago.
Michelle Alexander
#93. My father and I marched with Martin Luther King Jr. through the streets of Detroit.
Mitt Romney
#94. I marched back then - I was in a civil-rights musical, Fly Blackbird, and we met Martin Luther King.
George Takei
#95. I want to play Martin Luther King. That is absolutely a role and a character who is important to the landscape of the world that I really want to play.
Columbus Short
#96. Never undermine the power of passion. You have a very high chance of achieving anything you are passionate about.
Israelmore Ayivor
#97. To use a telling phrase of the Reverend Martin Luther King, we can say that we have defaulted on a promissory note and now is the time to honor it.
Pope Francis
#98. My name is Luther, so I thought I was going to be the next Martin Luther King.
Luther Campbell
#99. But lost in that sea of (valid) criticism is the perhaps subtler critique that in an age of consumerism, economic imperialism and what Martin Luther King Jr. called "jumboism," the sacrificial way of Jesus may be calling us to forsake the supersized life.
C. Christopher Smith
#100. Life's persistent and most urgent question is 'What are you doing for others?' " - MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.
Jean Shafiroff
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