Martin Luther King, Jr. Inspirational Quotations

I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.

Life's most persistent and urgent question is, 'What are you doing for others?'

The time is always right to do what is right.

A riot is the language of the unheard.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.

If you can't fly then run, if you can't run then walk, if you can't walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.

We may have all come on different ships, but we're in the same boat now.

We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.

We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.

That old law about 'an eye for an eye' leaves everybody blind. The time is always right to do the right thing.

Wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.

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

I just want to do God's will. And he's allowed me to go to the mountain. And I've looked over, and I've seen the promised land! I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land.

The Negro needs the white man to free him from his fears. The white man needs the Negro to free him from his guilt.

One of the great liabilities of history is that all too many people fail to remain awake through great periods of social change. Every society has its protectors of status quo and its fraternities of the indifferent who are notorious for sleeping through revolutions. Today, our very survival depends on our ability to stay awake, to adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant and to face the challenge of change.

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

History is the long and tragic story of the fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily.

Be The Peace You Wish To See In The World!

I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment, I still have a dream.

Only in the darkness can you see the stars.

Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.

Before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth, we were here. Before the pen of Jefferson etched across the pages of history the majestic words of the Declaration of Independence, we were here.

Everybody can be great...because anybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.

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.

There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right.

Life isn't worth living until you have found something worth dying for.

As the weeks and months unfolded, we realized that we were the victims of a broken promise.

Forgiveness is not an occasional act, it is a constant attitude.

Was not Abraham Lincoln an extremist? - "This nation cannot survive half slave and half free."

The movement for equality and justice can only be a success if it has both a mass and militant character; the barriers to be overcome require both.

A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.

The day we see the truth and cease to speak is the day we begin to die

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.

If the church of today does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authentic ring, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century.

Even if our motives are presently misunderstood. We will reach the goal of freedom in Birmingham and all over the nation, because the goal of America is freedom.

A right delayed is a right denied.

Seeing is not always believing.

Free at last, Free at last, Thank God almighty we are free at last.

True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.

No one really knows why they are alive until they know what they'd die for.

There comes a time when silence is betrayal.

The greatest purveyor of violence in the world : My own Government, I can not be Silent.

Courage faces fear and thereby masters it

The richer we have become materially, the poorer we become morally and spiritually. We have learned to fly in the air like birds and swim in the sea like fish, but we have not learned the simple art of living together as brothers.

The means by which we live have outdistanced the ends for which we live.

As long as there is poverty in the world I can never be rich, even if I have a billion dollars. As long as diseases are rampant and millions of people in this world cannot expect to live more than twenty-eight or thirty years, I can never be totally healthy even if I just got a good checkup at Mayo Clinic. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the way our world is made. No individual or nation can stand out boasting of being independent. We are interdependent.

One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.

Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church's often vocal sanction of things as they are.

The purpose of direct action is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation.

It is cheerful to God when you rejoice or laugh from the bottom of your heart.

There is no gain without struggle.

Quietly endure, silently suffer and patiently wait.

Lightning makes no sound until it strikes.

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?

You have very little morally persuasive power with people who can feel your underlying contempt.

But I say to you, my friends, there are certain things in our nation and in the world which I am proud to be maladjusted and which I hope all men of good-will will be maladjusted until the good societies realize.

Lukewarm acceptance is more bewildering than outright rejection.

If I sought to answer all of the criticisms that cross my desk, my secretaries would be engaged in little else in the course of the day, and I would have no time for constructive work.

I too am compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my particular hometown.

Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid.

I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham.

I would not hesitate to say that it is unfortunate that so-called demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham at this time, but I would say in more emphatic terms that it is even more unfortunate that the white power structure of this city left the Negro community with no other alternative.

Negro leaders sought to negotiate with the city fathers. But the political leaders consistently refused to engage in good-faith negotiation.

We had no alternative except that of preparing for direct action, whereby we would present our very bodies as a means of laying our case before the conscience of the local and national community.

We were not unmindful of the difficulties involved. So we decided to go through a process of self-purification.

Are you able to accept blows without retaliating?" and "Are you able to endure the ordeals of jail?"

We decided to set our direct-action program around the Easter season, realizing that, with exception of Christmas, this was the largest shopping period of the year. Knowing that a strong economic withdrawal program would be the by-product of direct action.

Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and establish such creative tension that a community that has consistently refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue.

My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain in civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure.

Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups are more immoral than individuals.

For years now I have heard the word "wait." It rings in the ear of every Negro with a piercing familiarity. This "wait" has almost always meant "never."

We must come to see with the distinguished jurist of yesterday that "justice too long delayed is justice denied."

Was not Paul an extremist for the gospel of Jesus Christ? - "I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus."

The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward the goal of political independence, and we still creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward the gaining of a cup of coffee at a lunch counter.

If I lived in a Communist country today where certain principles dear to the Christian faith are suppressed, I believe I would openly advocate disobeying these anti-religious laws.

There is a more excellent way, of love and nonviolent protest.

Will we be extremists for hate, or will we be extremists for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice, or will we be extremists for the cause of justice?

I am thankful, however, that some of our white brothers have grasped the meaning of this social revolution and committed themselves to it. They are still all too small in quantity, but they are big in quality.

They were too God-intoxicated to be "astronomically intimidated." They brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contest.

The contemporary church is so often a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. It is so often the arch supporter of the status quo.

For more than two centuries our foreparents labored here without wages; they made cotton king; and they built the homes of their masters in the midst of brutal injustice and shameful humiliation - and yet out of a bottomless vitality our people continue to thrive and develop.

Some people are so worn down by the yoke of oppression that they give up.

Slaves do not always welcome their deliverers. They become accustomed to being slaves. They would rather gear those ills they have

The oppressed must never allow the conscience of the oppressor to slumber. Religion reminds every man that he is his brother's keeper.

Nonviolence is an imperative in order to bring about ultimate community.

The negro cannot win the respect of the white people of the south or the peoples of the world if he is willing to sell the future of his children for his personal and immediate comfort and safety.

To accept injustice or segregation passively is to say to the oppressor that his actions are morally right.

Violence often brings about momentary results.

The Negro cannot win the respect of his oppressor by acquiescing; he merely increases the oppressor's arrogance and contempt.

A second way that oppressed people sometimes deal with oppression is to resort to physical violence and corroding hatred.

An eye for an eye leaves everybody blind.

Through nonviolent resistance the Negro will be able to rise to the noble height of opposing the unjust system while loving the perpetrators of the system.

Violence is not the way.

The principle of nonviolent resistance seeks to reconcile the truths of two opposites-Acquiescence and violence -while avoiding the extremes and immoralities of both.

If the Negro is to achieve the goal of integration, he must organize himself into a militant and nonviolent mass movement.

The Negro's problem will not be solved by running away.

By nonviolent resistance, the Negro can also enlist all men of good will in his struggle for equality.

So when Jesus says "Love your enemies," he is setting forth a profound and ultimately inescapable admonition.