Martin Luther King, Jr. Is Quotations

Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality.

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.

[I] know that love is ultimately the only answer to mankind's problems....

A productive and happy life is not something you find; it is something you make.

The end of life is not to be happy, nor to achieve pleasure and avoid pain, but to do the will of God, come what may.

It all boils down to this: that all life is interrelated.

Love is the most durable power in the world.

The major problem of life is learning how to handle the costly interruptions.

Love is the only creative, redemptive, transforming power, in the universe.

And I say to you, I have decided to stick with love, for I know that love is ultimately the only answer to mankind's problems. And I'm going to talk about it everywhere I go. For I have seen too much hate... every time I see it, I know that it does something to their faces and their personalities, and I say to myself that hate is too great a burden to bear. I have decided to love.

Whatever we do, we must keep God in the forefront. Let us be Christian in all of our actions. But I want to tell you this evening that it is not enough for us to talk about love, love is one of the pivotal points of the Christian face, faith. There is another side called justice. And justice is really love in calculation. Justice is love correcting that which revolts against love.

I guess one of the great agonies of life is that we are constantly trying to finish that which is unfinishable

Nonviolence is not sterile passivity, but a powerful moral force which makes for social transformation.

Without love, benevolence becomes egotism.

The ability to lead a happy life is made, not found

Love is a usually force able of transforming an rivalry into friend.

It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tired into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one destiny, affects all indirectly.

Love is the supreme unifying principle of life.

Love is understanding, redemptive goodwill for all men, so that you love everybody.

I know that love is ultimately the only answer to mankind's problems. And I'm going to talk about it everywhere I go. I know it isn't popular to talk about it in some circles today. I'm not talking about emotional bosh when I talk about love, I'm talking about a strong, demanding love.

In our struggle against racial segregation in Montgomery, Alabama, I came to see at a very early stage that a synthesis of Gandhi's method of nonviolence and the Christian ethic of love is the best weapon available to Negroes for this struggle for freedom and human dignity. It may well be that the Gandhian approach will bring about a solution to the race problem in America. His spirit is a continual reminder to oppressed people that it is possible to resist evil and yet not resort to violence.

The great issue of life is to harness the drum major instinct.

Jesus recognized that love is greater than like,

A third reason why we should love our enemies is that love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend. We never get rid of an enemy by meeting hate with hate; we get rid of an enemy by getting rid of enmity. By its very nature, hate destroys and tears down; by its very nature, love creates and builds up. Love transforms with redemptive power.

Music is the best consolation for a despaired man

Power properly understood is nothing but the ability to achieve purpose... one of the great problems of history is that the concepts of love and power have usually been contrasted as opposites --- polar opposites --- so that love is identified with a resignation of power, and power with a denial of love... What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.

Unarmed love is the most powerful force in all the world.

If I were constantly worried about death, I couldn't function. After a while, if your life is more or less constantly in peril, you come to a point where you accept the possibility philosophically.

Love is creative, understanding goodwill for all men. It is the refusal to defeat any individual. When you rise to the level of love, of its great beauty and power, you seek only to defeat evil systems. Individuals who happen to be caught up in that system, you love, but you seek to defeat the system.

We must discover the power of love, the power, the redemptive power of love. And when we discover that we will be able to make of this old world a new world. We will be able to make men better. Love is the only way.

Perhaps the worst sin in life is knowing right and not doing it.

Truth is not to be found either in traditional capitalism or in Marxism. Each represents a partial truth. Historically, capitalism failed to discern the truth in collective enterprise and Marxism failed to see the truth in individual enterprise.