The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–68,) born Michael Luther King, Jr., was an American Baptist minister and leader of the civil rights movement. Known for his dedication to ending segregation peacefully, he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.
In 1955, when King was only 26 and serving as a priest in Montgomery, Alabama, a seamstress named Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger on a city bus. King took up her cause and led a year-long Montgomery bus boycott during which his house was bombed, and he was assaulted and arrested. In 1957, the Supreme Court ruled that the segregation of buses and public facilities was unconstitutional.
The Montgomery bus boycott put King at the vanguard of the civil rights movement. In 1963, he joined other civil rights leaders at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, where he gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to an audience of 200,000.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. And the Voting Rights Act of 1965 ended voter discrimination in many Southern states.
In 1967, King delivered a speech called “Beyond Vietnam / A Time to Break Silence,” denouncing America’s involvement in the Vietnam War and the recruitment of poor and minority soldiers. The next year, King was assassinated at age 39 while standing on the balcony of a Memphis motel. He was preparing to lead a protest rally in solidarity with sanitation workers who were on strike. His death sparked riots in sixty cities.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Martin Luther King, Jr.
Life’s most persistent and urgent question is: “What are you doing for others?”
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Sacrifice, Outreach, Questions, Benevolence, Service, Miscellaneous
Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Peace
The question is no longer between violence and non-violence; it is between non-violence and non-existence.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Violence
Let us all hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away and the deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear-drenched communities, and in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Prejudice, Racism
Discover the element of good in your enemy. And as you seek to hate him, find the center of goodness and place your attention there and you will take a new attitude.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate… Returning violence for violence multiples violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Love, Violence, Peace
Life has its beginning and its maturity comes into being when an individual rises above self to something greater.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Men often hate each other because they fear each other; they fear each other because they don’t know each other; they don’t know each other because they cannot communicate; they cannot communicate because they are separated.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that really matter.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Living, Silence, Wildlife
Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Oppression
If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Togetherness, Community, Foolishness
An individual has not begun to live until he can rise above the narrow horizons of his particular individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity. And this is one of the big problems of life, that so many people never quite get to the point of rising above self. And so they end up the tragic victims of self-centeredness. They end up the victims of distorted and disrupted personality.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Love
When people get caught up with that which is right and they are willing to sacrifice for it, there is no stopping point short of victory.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
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.
Topics: Mind, The Mind
Science investigates; religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge which is power; religion gives man wisdom which is control. Science deals mainly with facts; religion deals mainly with values. The two are not rivals. They are complementary.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Science, Knowledge, Religion
The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Activism, Silence, Enemies, Friendship
Oh, the worst of all tragedies is not to die young, but to live until I am seventy-five and yet not ever truly to have lived.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism, are incapable of being conquered. A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon. Indeed, it is a weapon unique in history, which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Weapon
Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Hatred, Love, Hate
Ultimately a great nation is a compassionate nation. No individual or nation can be great if it does not have a concern for “the least of these”.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Find your sense of importance in something outside of the self. And you are then able to live because you have given your life to something outside and something that is meaningful, objectified. You rise above this self-absorption to something outside. This is the way to go through life with a balance, with the proper perspective because you’ve given yourself to something greater than self. Sometimes it’s friends, sometimes it’s family, sometimes it’s a great cause, it’s a great loyalty, but give yourself to that something and life becomes meaningful.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
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.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Law, Lawyers
It is not enough to know that two and two makes four, but we’ve got to know somehow that it’s right to be honest and just with our brothers. It’s not enough to know all about our philosophical and mathematical disciplines, but we’ve got to know the simple disciplines of being honest and loving and just with all humanity. If we don’t learn it, we will destroy ourselves by the misuse of our own powers.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
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.
Topics: Dedication, Vision, Nature, Dying, Commitment, Death
There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
We have ancient habits to deal with, vast structures of power, indescribably complicated problems to solve. But unless we abdicate our humanity altogether and succumb to fear and impotence in the presence of the weapons we have ourselves created, it is as possible and as urgent to put an end to war and violence between nations as it is to put an end to poverty and racial injustice.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Habit, General, Fear, Power, Poverty, Weapon
Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Humanity, Humankind, Violence
Never, never be afraid to do what’s right, especially if the well-being of a person or animal is at stake. Society’s punishments are small compared to the wounds we inflict on our soul when we look the other way.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into friend.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Love, Enemy, Friendship
The past is prophetic in that it asserts loudly that wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Past, The Past
No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Satisfaction
If you want to be important – that’s wonderful. If you want to be great – that’s wonderful. But recognize that he who is greatest among you shall be your servant. That’s your new definition of greatness – it means that everybody can be great because everybody can serve. You don’t have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve. You don’t have to know the second law of thermodynamics to serve. You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love…
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Greatness, Virtues, Helpfulness, Helping, Greatness & Great Things
No one really knows why they are alive until they know what they’d die for.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: 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.
Each of us is something of a schizophrenic personality, tragically divided against ourselves.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Self-Discovery
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