Top 100 Martin Luther King's Quotes
#1. 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
#2. Martin Luther King's 'I Have a Dream' speech always sends me down some path, some trajectory of some creative idea.
Abigail Washburn
#3. [Belafonte]'d take me to perform for Martin Luther King's cause. But when they were marching I did not take part, because I was not a citizen
Miriam Makeba
#4. We reached a high point in my opinion with the passage of the civil rights legislation and Martin Luther King's success and the crusade of others. I think we kind of breathed a sigh of relief as if we had achieved the end of racial discrimination or white supremacy.
Jimmy Carter
#5. I believed in Obama for social issues. I believe he brought our nation together and healed our racial divide. Martin Luther King's dream came true when he was elected. That's huge.
Melissa Etheridge
#6. If Congress can move President's Day, Columbus Day and, alas, Martin Luther King's Birthday celebration for the convenience of shoppers, shouldn't they at least consider moving Election Day for the convenience of voters?
Andrew Young
#7. 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
#8. In 1965, as Ralph Gleason has reported, when Martin Luther King's march on Selma, Alabama, was brutally attacked by local and state constabulary, Louis Armstrong, then in Copenhagen, said after watching the carnage on television, "They would beat Jesus if he was black and marched.
Nat Hentoff
#9. 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
#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 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
#17. 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. 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
#20. 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.
#21. 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.
#22. Most students graduate from high school knowing nine words about the civil rights movement: Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, and "I Have a Dream." And that's it!
Andrew Aydin
#23. 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
#24. 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
#25. I have to pinch myself sometimes. It's unbelievable, but it's not. Because I know that this would not be happening if it hadn't been for Dr. Martin Luther King.
Mavis Staples
#26. 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.
#27. School takes 13 years, because that is how long it takes to break a child's spirit.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#29. 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
#31. Martin Luther King Jr. believed that the highest point of Jesus's life was the moment when he forgave his executioners,
Karen Armstrong
#32. 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.
#33. [Martin Luther] King subpoened the nation's conscience . He was killed for it.
Bill Moyers
#34. 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.
#35. 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.
#36. Martin Luther King was talking about racism, war and poverty. I think we have made progress enormous progress in racism and war, but we have made little or no progress in poverty. And it's because the economy has gotten more and more complex as we have globalized.
Andrew Young
#38. 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
#39. 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
#41. Life's persistent and most urgent question is 'What are you doing for others?' " - MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.
Jean Shafiroff
#42. 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.
#43. 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.
#44. 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
#45. 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.
#47. 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.
#49. 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
#50. We can either walk the highroad of brotherhood or the low road of man's inhumanity to man.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#51. The Negro cannot win the respect of his oppressor by acquiescing; he merely increases the oppressor's arrogance and contempt.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#53. 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.
#54. 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
#55. 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.
#56. 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.
#57. 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.
#58. 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.
#60. 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
#61. There's no Black, White, Asian, or Latinos. The only "RACE" is the "HUMAN-RACE".
Henry Johnson Jr
#62. 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
#64. 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
#65. Whether it's a fully enlightened Christ or Buddha, or just a more aware Martin Luther King, Kennedy or Gandhi, what did they do with them here? They shoot them, crucify them, and get them out of the way because people are afraid of truth.
Frederick Lenz
#66. 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
#67. People look at me like I should have been like Malcolm X or Martin Luther King or Rosa Parks. I should have seen life like that and stay out of trouble, and don't do this and don't do that. But it's hard to live up to some people's expectations.
Rodney King
#68. 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
#69. 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.
#70. 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.
#71. 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
#72. 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
#73. Part of why I have started writing about love is feeling that our culture is forgetting what Martin Luther King taught. We name more and more streets and schools after him but that's almost irrelevant, because what is to be remembered is that strength to love.
Bell Hooks
#74. The potential beauty of human life is constantly made ugly by man's ever-recurring song of retaliation.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#75. It's hard to deny that an alarming number of those who stood for peace, not war, were either killed by deranged lone gunmen or else died in suspicious circumstances. We refer of course to the likes of JFK, Martin Luther King, Benazir Bhutto, Bobby Kennedy and John Lennon, to name but a few.
James Morcan
#76. 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.
#77. 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.
#78. 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
#79. 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.
#80. 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.
#81. You put your own joy in prison if you work hard to make other people's happiness suffocate.
Israelmore Ayivor
#82. 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
#83. It's not burn baby burn, but learn, baby, learn, so that you can earn, baby, earn.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#84. 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.
#85. 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
#88. At Ken Lay's funeral service the minister compared him to Dr. Martin Luther King, Junior. The difference is Dr. King had a dream, Ken Lay had a scheme.
Jay Leno
#89. 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.
#90. 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
#93. 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.
#94. 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.
#96. 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
#97. 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
#98. 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.
#99. 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.
#100. 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
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