Memorable Quotes by Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

Memorable Quotes by Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

"Autobiography of Religious Development"
Crozer Theological Seminary--1949

"It is quite easy for me to think of a God of love mainly because I grew up in a family where love was central and where lovely relationships were ever present. It is quite easy for me to think of the universe as basically friendly mainly because of my uplifting hereditary and environmental circumstances. It is quite easy for me to lean more toward optimism than pessimism about human nature mainly because of my childhood experiences. It is impossible to get at the roots of one's religious attitudes without taking in account the psychological and historical factors that play upon
the individual."

"Montgomery, Alabama" December 3, 1959

"Freedom is not free."

"Redbook " September 1961

"I am first and foremost a minister. I love the church, and I feel that civil rights is a part of it. For me, at least, the basis of my struggle for integration-and I mean the full integration of Negroes into every phase of American life-is something that began with a religious motivation....And I know that my religion has come to mean more to me that ever before. I have come to believe more and more in a personal God-not a process, but a person, a creative power with infinite love who answers prayers."

"Washington, D.C. " July 19, 1962

"We are simply seeking to 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 no longer argue that the color of a man's skin determines the content of his character; the dream of a land where every man will respect the dignity and worth of human personality-this is the dream. When it is realized, the jangling discords of our nation will be transformed into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood, and men everywhere will know that America is truly the land of the free and home of the brave."

"Sixteenth Street Baptist Church " Birmingham, Alabama May 3, 1963

"Today was a dark day in Birmingham. The policemen were mean to us. They got their violent, angry dogs and turned them loose on nonviolent people, unarmed people. But not only that, they got their water system working. And here and there we saw the water hose, with water pouring on young boys and girls, old men and women, with great and staggering force. Birmingham was a
mean city today. But in spite of the meanness of Birmingham, we must confront her with our kindness and our goodness and our determination to be nonviolent. As difficult as it is, we must meet hate with love. As hard as it is, we must meet physical force with soul force....Just let them get their dogs and let them get their hose, and...we will leave them standing before their God and world covered with the blood and reeking with the stench of their Negro brothers."

"Detroit, Michigan " June 23, 1963

"If a man hasn't discovered something that he will die for, he isn't fit to live."

"March on Washington " Washington, D.C. August 28, 1963

"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...sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood....This is our hope.... With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day....This will be the day when all God's children will be able to sing with new meaning, "My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of the I sing."

"St. Augustine, Florida " June 5, 1964

"If physical death is the price I must pay to free my white brothers and sisters from the permanent death of the spirit, then nothing could be more redemptive."

On "Face the Nation " August 29, 1965

"The Negro man in this country...has never been able to be a man."

"Frogmore, S.C. " November, 14, 1966

"There must be a better distribution of wealth, and maybe America must move toward a Democratic Socialism."

" Atlanta, Georgia " August 6, 1967

"The judgment of God is on America now!"

" Atlanta, Georgia " December 24, 1967

"In 1963...in Washington, D.C.,...I Tried to talk to the nation about a dream that I had had, and I must confess...that not long after talking about that dream I started seeing it turn into a nightmare...just a few weeks after I had talked about it. It was when four beautiful...Negro girls were murdered in a church in Birmingham, Alabama. I watched that dream turn into a nightmare as I moved through the ghettos of the nation and saw black brothers and sisters perishing on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity, and saw the nation doing nothing to grapple with the Negroes' problem of poverty. I saw that dream turn into a
nightmare as I watched my black brothers and sisters in the midst of anger and understandable outrage, in the midst of their hurt, in the midst of their disappointment, turn to misguided riots to try to solve that problem. I saw the dream turn into a nightmare as I watched the war in Vietnam
escalating....Yes, I am personally the victim of deferred dreams, of blasted hopes."
A Wonderful Collection of Quotes by
Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. from his many speeches.

Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor in America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours.

Martin Luther King, Jr., The Trumpet of Conscience, 1967.


A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, 1967.


The limitation of riots, moral questions aside, is that they cannot win and their participants know it. Hence, rioting is not revolutionary but reactionary because it invites defeat. It involves an emotional catharsis, but it must be followed by a sense of futility.

Martin Luther King, Jr., The Trumpet of Conscience, 1967.


Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time: the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence. Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.

Martin Luther King, Jr., Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Stockholm, Sweden, December 11, 1964.


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., Why We Can't Wait, 1963.


The curse of poverty has no justification in our age. It is socially as cruel and blind as the practice of cannibalism at the dawn of civilization, when men ate each other because they had not yet learned to take food from the soil or to consume the abundant animal life around them. The time has come for us to civilize ourselves by the total, direct and immediate abolition of poverty.

Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, 1967.


It is necessary to understand that Black Power is a cry of disappointment. The Black Power slogan did not spring full grown from the head of some philosophical Zeus. It was born from the wounds of despair and disappointment. It is a cry of daily hurt and persistent pain.

Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, 1967.


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., speech, Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Atlanta, Georgia, August 16, 1967.


When we ask Negroes to abide by the law, let us also declare that the white man does not abide by law in the ghettos. Day in and day out he violates welfare laws to deprive the poor of their meager allotments; he flagrantly violates building codes and regulations; his police make a mockery of law; he violates laws on equal employment and education and the provisions of civil services. The slums are the handiwork of a vicious system of the white society; Negroes live in them, but they do not make them, any more than a prisoner makes a prison.

Martin Luther King, Jr., The Trumpet of Conscience, 1967.


It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important.

Martin Luther King, Jr., Wall Street Journal, November 13, 1962.


Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction....The chain reaction of evil--hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars--must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.

Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength To Love, 1963.


Success, recognition, and conformity are the bywords of the modern world where everyone seems to crave the anesthetizing security of being identified with the majority.

Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength to Love, 1963.

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., Strength To Love, 1963.


Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.

Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength to Love, 1963.

I am aware that there are many who wince at a distinction between property and persons--who hold both sacrosanct. My views are not so rigid. A life is sacred. Property is intended to serve life, and no matter how much we surround it with rights and respect, it has no personal being. It is part of the earth man walks on; it is not man.

Martin Luther King, Jr., The Trumpet of Conscience, 1967.


The bombs in Vietnam explode at home; they destroy the hopes and possibilities for a decent America.

Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, 1967.


We must combine the toughness of the serpent and the softness of the dove, a tough mind and a tender heart.

Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength to Love, 1963.


The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state. It must be the guide and the critic of the state, and never its tool. If the church does not recapture its prophetic zeal, it will become an irrelevant social club without moral or spiritual authority.

Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength to Love, 1963.


Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice. Justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love.

Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, 1967.


The Negroes of America had taken the President, the press and the pulpit at their word when they spoke in broad terms of freedom and justice. But the absence of brutality and unregenerate evil is not the presence of justice. To stay murder is not the same thing as to ordain brotherhood.

Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, 1967.


Many of the ugly pages of American history have been obscured and forgotten....America owes a debt of justice which it has only begun to pay. If it loses the will to finish or slackens in its determination, history will recall its crimes and the country that would be great will lack the most indispensable element of greatness--justice.

Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, 1967.


Man is man because he is free to operate within the framework of his destiny. He is free to deliberate, to make decisions, and to choose between alternatives. He is distinguished from animals by his freedom to do evil or to do good and to walk the high road of beauty or tread the low road of ugly degeneracy.

Martin Luther King, Jr., The Measures of Man, 1959.


A good many observers have remarked that if equality could come at once the Negro would not be ready for it. I submit that the white American is even more unprepared.

Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?, 1967.


Nonviolent action, the Negro saw, was the way to supplement, not replace, the progress of change. It was the way to divest himself of passivity without arraying himself in vindictive force.

Martin Luther King, Jr., Why We Can't Wait, 1964.


If a man hasn't discovered something that he will die for, he isn't fit to live.

Martin Luther King, Jr., speech, Detroit, Michigan, June 23, 1963.


To be a Negro in America is to hope against hope.

Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, 1967.


Being a Negro in America means trying to smile when you want to cry. It means trying to hold on to physical life amid psychological death. It means the pain of watching your children grow up with clouds of inferiority in their mental skies. It means having your legs cut off, and then being condemned for being a cripple. It means seeing your mother and father spiritually murdered by the slings and arrows of daily exploitation, and then being hated for being an orphan.

Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, 1967.