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Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR., Strength to Love
The real problem is that through our scientific genius we've made of the world a neighborhood, but through our moral and spiritual genius we've failed to make of it a brotherhood.
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR., sermon delivered at Detroit's Second Baptist Church, Feb. 28, 1954
I met Malcolm X once in Washington, but circumstances didn't enable me to talk with him for more than a minute. He is very articulate ... but I totally disagree with many of his political and philosophical views — at least insofar as I understand where he now stands. I don't want to seem to sound self-righteous, or absolutist, or that I think I have the only truth, the only way. Maybe he does have some of the answer. I don't know how he feels now, but I know that I have often wished that he would talk less of violence, because violence is not going to solve our problem. And in his litany of articulating the despair of the Negro without offering any positive, creative alternative, I feel that Malcolm has done himself and our people a great disservice. Fiery, demagogic oratory in the black ghettos, urging Negroes to arm themselves and prepare to engage in violence, as he has done, can reap nothing but grief.
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR., Playboy interview, Jan. 1965
I submit to you that if a man has not discovered something that he will die for, he isn't fit to live.
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR., speech during the Great March on Detroit, Jun. 23, 1963
We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR., "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," 1963
I feel that when a white child goes to school only with white children, unconsciously that child grows up in many instances devoid of a world perspective. There is an unconscious provincialism, and it can develop into an unconscious superiority complex just as a Negro develops an unconscious inferiority complex. And it seems to me that one must, that our society must come to see that this whole question of, of integration is not merely a matter of quantity, having the same this and that in terms of a building or a desk or this, but it's a matter of quality. It's, if I can't communicate with a man, I'm not equal to him. It's not only a matter of mathematics; it's a matter of psychology and philosophy.
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR., interview with Robert Penn Warren, 1964
True peace is not merely the absence of tension: it is the presence of justice.
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR., attributed, Let the Trumpet Sound: A Life of Martin Luther King, Jr
I think it's absolutely necessary for the leadership to be united in order to make the revolution effective.
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR., interview with Robert Penn Warren, 1964
One of the grat tragedies of life is that men seldom bridge the gulf between practice and profession, between doing and saying. A persistent schizophrenia leaves so many of us tragically divided against ourselves. On the one hand, we proudly profess certain sublime and noble principles, but on the other hand, we sadly practise the very antithesis of these principles. How often are our lives characterised by a high blood pressure of creeds and an anaemia of deeds!
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR., Strength to Love
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR., "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," 1963
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., speech to Negro American Labor Council, May 1965
Wherever schools can be integrated through the busing method, and where it won't be just a, a terrible inconvenience, I think it ought to be done because I think the inconveniences of a segregated education are much greater than the inconveniences of busing students so that they can get an integrated quality education.
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR., interview with Robert Penn Warren, 1964
We, the disinherited of this land, we who have been oppressed so long, are tired of going through the long night of captivity. And now we are reaching out for the daybreak of freedom and justice and equality.
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR., Montgomery Bus Boycott speech, delivered at Holt Street Baptist Church, Dec. 5, 1955
We must combine the toughness of the serpent with the softness of the dove, a tough mind and a tender heart.
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR., Strength to Love
To accept passively an unjust system is to cooperate with that system; thereby the oppressed become as evil as the oppressor. Non-cooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good.
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR., Stride Toward Freedom
The time is always right to do what's right.
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR., speech delivered at Finney Chapel at Oberlin College, Oct. 22, 1964
There is still a voice crying out through the vista of time, saying: "Love your enemies , bless them that curse you , pray for them that despitefully use you." Then, and only then, can you matriculate into the university of eternal life.
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR., speech delivered at the Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom in Washington, D.C., 1957
This is a moral universe. It hinges on moral foundations. If we are to make of this a better world, we've got to go back and rediscover that precious value that we've left behind.
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR., sermon delivered at Detroit's Second Baptist Church, Feb. 28, 1954
For nine years following 1945 we denied the people of Vietnam the right of independence. For nine years we vigorously supported the French in their abortive effort to recolonize Vietnam. Before the end of the war we were meeting eighty percent of the French war costs. Even before the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu, they began to despair of their reckless action, but we did not. We encouraged them with our huge financial and military supplies to continue the war even after they had lost the will. Soon we would be paying almost the full costs of this tragic attempt at recolonization.
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR., speech at Riverside Church in New York City, "A Time to Break Silence", April 4, 1967
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., Christmas sermon delivered at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, 1957
One may well ask: "How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?" The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal, but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that "an unjust law is no law at all."
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR., "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," 1963
Within the best of us, there is some evil, and within the worst of us, there is some good. When we come to see this, we take a different attitude toward individuals.
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR., sermon delivered at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, Nov. 17, 1957
He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love.
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR., Christmas sermon delivered at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, 1957
Any nation or government that deprives an individual of freedom is in that moment committing an act of moral and spiritual murder. Any individual who is not concerned about his freedom commits an act of moral and spiritual suicide.
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR., Address at the Fiftieth Annual NAACP Convention, Jul. 17, 1959
Your ultimate allegiance is not to the government, not to the state, not to nation, not to any man-made institution. The Christian owes his ultimate allegiance to God, and if any earthly institution conflicts with God's will it is your Christian duty to take a stand against it. You must never allow the transitory evanescent demands of man-made institutions to take precedence over the eternal demands of the Almighty God.
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR., sermon delivered at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, Nov. 4, 1956
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR., Address at the Golden Anniversary Conference of the National Urban League, Sep. 6, 1960
As I ponder the madness of Vietnam and search within myself for ways to understand and respond in compassion, my mind goes constantly to the people of that peninsula. I speak now not of the soldiers of each side, not of the ideologies of the Liberation Front, not of the junta in Saigon, but simply of the people who have been living under the curse of war for almost three continuous decades now. I think of them, too, because it is clear to me that there will be no meaningful solution there until some attempt is made to know them and hear their broken cries.
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR., speech at Riverside Church in New York City, "A Time to Break Silence", April 4, 1967
Hate destroys the very structure of the personality of the hater.... when you start hating anybody, it destroys the very center of your creative response to life and the universe; so love everybody.
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR., sermon delivered at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, Nov. 17, 1957
No, no, we are not satisfied and will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR., "I Have a Dream" speech, August 28, 1963
The Vietnam War is either morally right or morally wrong. It's not on the one hand or on the other hand.
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR., "Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Searing Antiwar Speech, Fifty Years Later", The New Yorker, April 3, 2017
I'm convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, militarism and economic exploitation are incapable of being conquered.
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR., Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence
All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence. 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.
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR., A Martin Luther King Treasury
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