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. |
We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together
as fools.
Martin Luther King Jr. |
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things
that matter.
Martin Luther King Jr. |
Ten thousand fools proclaim themselves into obscurity, while
one wise man forgets himself into immortality.
Martin Luther King Jr. |
The time is always right to do what is right.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Speech at Oberlin College, 1964. |
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Letter from Birmingham Jail, April 16,
1963. |
There comes a time when people get tired of being plunged
into the abyss of exploitation and nagging injustice.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story,
1958. |
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.
Martin Luther King Jr.
I Have a Dream speech, Civil Rights March
on Washington, August 28 1963. |
And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when
we let it ring from every tenement and every hamlet, from every
state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when
all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles,
Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing
in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last,
free at last. Thank God Almighty, we are free at last."
Martin Luther King Jr.
I Have a Dream speech, Civil Rights March
on Washington, August 28 1963. |
One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey
just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey
unjust laws.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Letter from Birmingham Jail, April 1963. |
I still believe that one day mankind will bow before the altars
of God and be crowned triumphant over war and bloodshed, and
nonviolent redemptive goodwill will proclaim the rule of the
land.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech, Dec
10 1964. |
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. |
We have learned to fly the air like birds and swim the sea
like fish, but we have not learned the simple art of living
together as brothers. Our abundance has brought us neither peace
of mind nor serenity of spirit.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Strength to Love, 1963. |
If you lose hope, somehow you lose the vitality that keeps
life moving, you lose that courage to be, that quality that
helps you to go on in spite of all. And so today I still have
a dream.
Martin Luther King Jr.
The Trumpet of Conscience, 1968. |
Faith is taking the first step, even when you don't see the
whole staircase.
Martin Luther King Jr. |
All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality.
Martin Luther King Jr. |
Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Strength to Love, 1963. |
A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral
law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out
of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of Saint
Thomas Aquinas, an unjust law is a human law that is not rooted
in eternal and natural law.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Letter from Birmingham Jail, April 1963. |
Hatred and bitterness can never cure the disease of fear;
only love can do that. Hatred paralyzes life; love releases
it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens
life; love illuminates it.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Strength to Love, 1963. |
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.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Strength to Love, 1963. |
I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically
bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright
daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality....
I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have
the final word.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech, Dec
10 1964. |
In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies,
but the silence of our friends.
Martin Luther King Jr. |
Let no man pull you low enough to hate him.
Martin Luther King Jr. |
My parents would always tell me that I should not hate the
white man, but that it was my duty as a Christian to love him.
Martin Luther King Jr.
An Autobiography of Religious Development,
Nov 1950. |
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 your verb agree to serve....You don't have
to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to serve.
You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.
Martin Luther King Jr. |
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. So I'm happy tonight.
I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Speech in Memphis, April 3, 1968, the day
before King was assassinated. |
I submit to you that if a man hasn't discovered something
he will die for, he isn't fit to live.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Speech in Detroit, June 23, 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. |
Now, I say to you today my friends, even though we face the
difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It
is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. 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.'
Martin Luther King Jr.
I Have a Dream speech, Civil Rights March
on Washington, August 28 1963. |
The spirit of Lincoln still lives; that spirit born of the
teachings of the Nazarene, who promised mercy to the merciful,
who lifted the lowly, strengthened the weak, ate with publicans,
and made the captives free. In the light of this divine example,
the doctrines of demagogues shiver in their chaff.
Martin Luther King Jr.
The Negro and the Constitution, May 1944. |