Top 100 Martin Luther King Jr S Quotes
#1. 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
#2. 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
#3. Each year on the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s birth, America has the opportunity to reflect on our nation's progress towards the realization of his dream.
Adam Schiff
#4. 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
#5. 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
#6. 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
#7. 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
#8. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s peaceful, determined struggle for social justice, and Sargent Shriver, who launched the Peace Corps, were early heroes. A career of public service was the ultimate aspiration.
Queen Noor Of Jordan
#9. 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
#10. 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.
#11. 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.
#12. 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.
#13. 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.
#14. 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
#15. We can dream of an America, and a world, in which love and not money are civilization's bottom line.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#16. 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.
#18. Whatever measure of influence I had as a result of the importance which the world attaches to the Nobel Peace Prize would have to be used to bring the philosophy of nonviolence to all the world's people who grapple with the age-old problem of racial injustice.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#19. Man was born into barbarism when killing his fellow man was a normal condition of existence. He became endowed with a conscience.
And he has now reached the day when violence toward another human being must become as abhorrent as eating another's flesh.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#20. 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
#21. I want to suggest some of the things that should begin your life's blueprint. Number one ... should be a deep belief in your own dignity. Your worth and your own somebodiness ... Always feel that you count. Always feel that you have worth, and always feel that your life has ultimate significance.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#22. School takes 13 years, because that is how long it takes to break a child's spirit.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#25. Martin Luther King Jr. believed that the highest point of Jesus's life was the moment when he forgave his executioners,
Karen Armstrong
#26. If you want to move people, it has to be toward a vision that's positive for
them, that taps important values, that gets them something they desire and
it has to be presented in a compelling way so that they feel inspired to
follow.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#27. Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man's 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.
#28. 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.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#31. Life's persistent and most urgent question is 'What are you doing for others?' " - MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.
Jean Shafiroff
#32. A law is unjust if it is inflicted on a minority that, as a result of being denied the right to vote, had no part in enacting or devising the law. Who can say that the legislature of Alabama which set up the state's segregation laws was democratically elected?
Martin Luther King Jr.
#33. If I can help somebody as I pass along, if I can cheer somebody with a word or song, if I can show somebody he's traveling wrong, then my living will not be in vain.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#34. 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.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#36. Whatever your life's work is, do it well. A man should do his job so well that the living, the dead, and the unborn could do it no better.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#38. Luke's like no other guy that I know. I mean, I respect him. I have really high standards and I only respect two other guys," she said, casually.
"I know." I said dryly, "Jesus and Martin Luther King Jr.
Tijan
#39. We can either walk the highroad of brotherhood or the low road of man's inhumanity to man.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#40. The Negro cannot win the respect of his oppressor by acquiescing; he merely increases the oppressor's arrogance and contempt.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#42. If I hit you and you hit me and I hit you back and you hit me back and go on, you see, that goes on ad infinitum. It just never ends. Somewhere somebody must have a little sense, and that's
the strong person.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#43. He who is greatest among you shall be a servant. That's the new definition of greatness ... By giving that definition of greatness, it means that everybody can be great, because everybody can serve.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#44. Our world hinges on moral foundations. God has made it so. God has made the universe to be based on a moral law. So long as man disobeys it he is revolting against God. That's what we need in the world today: people who will stand for right and goodness.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#45. We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation. This may well be mankind's last chance to choose between chaos and community.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#46. We aren't engaged in any negative protest and in any negative arguments with anybody. We are saying that we are determined to be men. We are determined to be people. We are saying that we are God's children. And that we don't have to live like we are forced to live.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#48. There's no Black, White, Asian, or Latinos. The only "RACE" is the "HUMAN-RACE".
Henry Johnson Jr
#50. Martin Luther King Jr. really understood the role of the churches when he said, 'The church is not meant to be the master of the state.' We don't sort of take power and grab the levers of government and impose our agenda down people's throats.
Jim Wallis
#51. Like the word hope, we often think of power as negative. It's not. The best definition of power comes from Martin Luther King Jr. He described power as the ability to effect change.
Brene Brown
#52. If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read Vietnam. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the hopes of men the world over.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#53. Personalism's insistence that only personality-finite and infinite-is ultimately real strengthened me in two convictions: it gave me metaphysical and philosophical grounding for the idea of a personal God, and it gave me a metaphysical basis for the dignity and worth of all human personality.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#54. Some people criticize the faithful for getting involved in politics, but it's important to remember that down through the centuries, people motivated by their faith have done many important things. Martin Luther King Jr. - motivated by his faith - brought about an end to segregation in our country.
Frank Wolf
#55. The potential beauty of human life is constantly made ugly by man's ever-recurring song of retaliation.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#56. We must stand up and say, "I'm black and I'm beautiful," and this self-affirmation is the black man's need, made compelling by the white man's crimes against him.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#57. It's all right to tell a man to lift himself by his own bootstraps, but it is cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#58. People who boast about age are actually forgetting something special. Age is not barrier to or elevator to success; that's the job of vision.
Israelmore Ayivor
#59. As television beamed the image of this extraordinary gathering across the border oceans, everyone who believed in man's capacity to better himself had a moment of inspiration and confidence in the future of the human race.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#60. It's wrong to hate. It always has been wrong and it always will be wrong. It's wrong in America, it's wrong in Germany, it's wrong in Russia, it's wrong in China. It was wrong in 2000 B.C., and it's wrong in 1954 A.D. It always has been wrong, and it always will be wrong.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#61. You put your own joy in prison if you work hard to make other people's happiness suffocate.
Israelmore Ayivor
#62. Memphis is the place where rock was born and Martin Luther King, Jr., was killed. It's full of contradictions, abject poverty, and riches that only music can provide.
Shawn Amos
#63. It's not burn baby burn, but learn, baby, learn, so that you can earn, baby, earn.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#64. I'm very glad Christ tells us to love our neighbor and not to like our neighbor because it's hard to like someone threatening your children and throwing fire bombs through your window, but He asks us to love them and that I can do
Martin Luther King Jr.
#65. Sitting in the Oval Office, beneath a painting of George Washington, with a bust of Martin Luther King Jr. over his right shoulder and a bust of Abraham Lincoln over his left shoulder, Obama told 'National Journal' that the country's economic woes are deep and endemic.
Ron Fournier
#68. It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence in this world; it's nonviolence or nonexistence. That is where we are today.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#71. There is no truth to the myth that Negroes depreciate property. The fact is that most Negroes are kept out of residential neighborhoods so long that when one of us is finally sold a home, it's already depreciated.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#72. Never, never be afraid to do what's right, especially if the well-being of a person or animal is at stake. Society's punishments are small compared to the wounds we inflict on our soul when we look the other way.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#74. Every condition exists," Martin Luther King Jr. once wrote, "simply because someone profits by its existence. This economic exploitation is crystallized in the slum." Exploitation. Now, there's a word that has been scrubbed out of the poverty debate.
Matthew Desmond
#75. In order to be true to one's conscience and true to God, a righteous man has no alternative but to refuse to cooperate with an evil system.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#76. It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#77. When I took up the cross I recognized it's meaning. The cross is something that you bear, and ultimately, that you die on.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#78. The larger society was willing to let the frustrations born of racism's violence become internalized and consume its victims. America's horror was only expressed when the aggression turned outward, when the ghetto and its controls could no longer contain its destructiveness.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#79. We are called upon to help the discouraged beggars in life's marketplace. But one day we must come to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#80. All my adult life I have deplored violence and war as instruments for achieving solutions to mankind's problems. I am firmly committed to the creative power of nonviolence as the force which is capable of winning lasting and meaningful brotherhood and peace.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#81. There is a magnificent new militancy within the Negro community all across this nation. And I welcome this as a marvelous development. The Negro of America is saying he's determined to be free and he is militant enough to stand up.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#82. You know, it's hard to say this, but I suspect that Obama is afraid either of blackmail potential or even worse. And he has referred to the killing of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in this main saying, "don't you remember what happened to Dr. King?"
Ray McGovern
#84. The Negro's economic problem was compounded by the emergence and growth of automation. Since discrimination and lack of education confined him to unskilled and semi-skilled labor, the Negro was and remains the first to suffer in these days of great technological development.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#85. I refuse to accept the idea that the 'is-ness' of a man's present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the 'ought-ness' that forever confronts him.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#86. We should never forget that everything Adolph Hitler did in Germany was "legal" and everything the Hungarian freedom fighers did in Hungary was "illegal." It was "illegal" to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler's Germany.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#88. It was argued that the Negro was inferior by nature because of Noah's curse upon the children of Ham ... The greatest blasphemy of the whole ugly process was that the white man ended up making God his partner in the exploitation of the Negro.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#89. Never, never be afraid to do what is right. Society's punishments are small compared to the wounds we inflict on our souls when we look away. - Martin Luther King Jr
Harsh Mander
#90. 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
#91. If the cruelties of slavery could not stop us, the opposition we now face will surely fail. Because the goal of America is freedom, abused and scorned tho' we may be, our destiny is tied up with America's destiny.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#92. Like anybody, I would like to have a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#93. His headstone said
FREE AT LAST, FREE AT LAST
But death is a slave's freedom
We seek the freedom of free men
And the construction of a world
Where Martin Luther King could have lived and
preached non-violence
Nikki Giovanni
#94. The sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#95. After we've discovered what God called us to do, after we've discovered our life's work, we should set out to do that work so well that the living, the dead, or the unborn couldn't do it any better.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#96. I think it's a good thing for a president or political leaders to want to put their values or their faith into action. Desmond Tutu did that in South Africa. Martin Luther King Jr. did that here. This is a good thing.
Jim Wallis
#97. The only weapon that we have in our hands this evening is the weapon of protest. That's all.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#98. In spite of its glowing talk about the welfare of the masses, Communism's methods and philosophy strip man of his dignity and worth, leaving him as little more than a depersonalized cog in the ever-turning wheel of the state.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#99. Try not to leave your work for someone else to do. If possible, carry the work of someone and add it to yours. That's a trait of leaders!
Israelmore Ayivor
#100. Love is the most durable power in the world. This creative force is the most potent instrument available in mankind's quest for peace and security.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
