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.
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.
The quality, not the longevity, of one's life is what is important.
We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.
I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.
Yes, I see the Church as the body of Christ. But, oh! How we have blemished and scarred that body through social neglect and through fear of being nonconformists.
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.
We may have all come on different ships, but we're in the same boat now.
We must build dikes of courage to hold back the flood of fear.
If a man hasn't discovered something that he will die for, he isn't fit to live.
There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love.
No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.
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.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation when they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.
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
He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it.
If a man is called to be a streetsweeper, 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 streetsweeper who did his job well.
The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be.
Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.
When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village 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 that old Negro spiritual, Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!
The Negro needs the white man to free him from his fears. The white man needs the Negro to free him from his guilt.
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.
Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it.
The hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who remain neutral in times of great moral conflict.
We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
Mankind must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
Occasionally in life there are those moments of unutterable fulfillment which cannot be completely explained by those symbols called words. Their meanings can only be articulated by the inaudible language of the heart.
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
Law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress.
It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important.
I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate.
Darkness can not drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.
At the center of non-violence stands the principle of love.
We must combine the toughness of the serpent with the softness of the dove, a tough mind and a tender heart.
Morality cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. Judicial decrees may not change the heart, but they can restrain the heartless.
It is my hope that as the Negro plunges deeper into the quest for freedom and justice he will plunge even deeper into the philosophy of non-violence. The Negro all over the South must come to the point that he can say to his white brother: We will match your capacity to inflict suffering with our capacity to endure suffering. We will meet your physical force with soul force. We will not hate you, but we will not obey your evil laws. We will soon wear you down by pure capacity to suffer.
The past is prophetic in that it asserts loudly that wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.
Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal.
All progress is precarious, and the solution of one problem brings us face to face with another problem.
Property is intended to serve life, and no matter how much we surround it with rights and respect, it has no personal being. It is part of the earth man walks on. It is not man.
We who in engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive.
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.
I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. That is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.
A riot is the language of the unheard.
I want to be the white man's brother, not his brother-in-law.
That old law about an eye for an eye leaves everybody blind. The time is always right to do the right thing.
The more there are riots, the more repressive actin will take place, and the more we face the danger of a right-wing takeover and eventually a fascist society.
Riots are the voices of the unheard.
In this Revolution no plans have been written for retreat.
When you are right you cannot be too radical; when you are wrong, you cannot be too conservative.
We have genuflected before the god of science only to find that it has given us the atomic bomb, producing fears and anxieties that science can never mitigate.
Life's most persistent and urgent question is: What are you doing for others? Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how. The moment you know how, you begin to die a little.
Pity may represent little more than the impersonal concern which prompts the mailing of a check, but true sympathy is the personal concern which demands the giving of one's soul.
Nothing pains some people more than having to think.
We must use time creatively -- and forever realize that the time is always hope to do great things.
There is nothing more tragic than to find an individual bogged down in the length of life, devoid of breadth.
Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill-will.
The time is always right to do what is right.
I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over, and I've seen the Promised Land.
War is a poor chisel to carve out tomorrow.
Whatever your life's work is, do it well. A man should do his job so well that the living, the dead, and the unborn could do it no better.