Martin King Quotations

One who breaks an unjust law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.

Love is the only cement that can hold this broken community together.When I am commanded to love, I am commanded to restore community, to resist injustice, and to meet the needs fo my brothers.

If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.

We must use time creatively -- and forever realize that the time is always hope to do great things.

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

To be silent is to acknowledge, to positively reinforce.

We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people.

One day we must come to see that peace is not merely a distant goal we seek, but that it is a means by which we arrive at that goal. We must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means.

A riot is at bottom the language of the unheard.

I submit that an individual who breaks the law that conscience tells him is unjust and willingly accepts the penalty by staying in jail to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the very highest respect for law.

The greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -- my own government.

The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral; returning violence with violence only multiplies voilence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.