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.
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Ignorance
True peace is not merely the absence of tension: it is the presence of justice.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Justice, Absence
On some positions, Cowardice asks the question, “Is it safe?” Expediency asks the question, “Is it politic?” And Vanity comes along and asks the question, “Is it popular?” But Conscience asks the question “Is it right?” And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must do it because Conscience tells him it is right. I believe today that there is a need for all people of good will to come together with a massive act of conscience and say in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “We ain’t goin’ study war no more.” This is the challenge facing modern man.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
In every age and every generation, men have envisioned a promised land.
—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: Violence, Love, Peace
There is scarcely anything more tragic in human life than a child who is not wanted. That which should be a blessing becomes a curse for parent and child.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Ultimately a genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus, but a molder of consensus.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Vision, Courage
Keep moving. Let nothing slow you up. Move on with dignity and honor and respectability.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
We must discover the power of love, the power, the redemptive power of love. And when we discover that we will be able to make of this old world a new world. We will be able to make men better. Love is the only way.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Nonviolent resistance is not aimed against oppressors, but against oppression.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
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: Goodness, Tolerance, Love
Great people aren’t those who are happy at times of convenience and content, but of how they are in times of catastrophe and controversy.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Justice
In the end we’ll remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.
—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.
Some things are right and some things are wrong, no matter if everybody is doing the contrary. Some things in this universe are absolute. The God of the universe has made it so. And so long as we adopt this relative attitude toward right and wrong, we’re revolting against the very laws of God himself.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Power, Forgiveness
Let us therefore continue our triumphal march to the realization of the American dream. for all of us today, the battle is in our hands. The road ahead is not altogether a smooth one. There are no broad highways that lead us easily and inevitably to quick solutions. We are still in for the season of suffering. How long? Not long. Because no lie can live forever. our God is marching on.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
We must massively assert our dignity and worth. We must stand up amidst a system that still oppresses us and develop an unassailable and majestic sense of values.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Every genuine expression of love grows out of a consistent and total surrender to God.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
I am not interested in power for power’s sake, but I’m interested in power that is moral, that is right and that is good.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Power
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.
As long as the mind is enslaved, the body can never be free.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
It is love that will save our world and our civilization, love even for enemies.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Not everybody can be famous, but everybody can be great, because greatness is determined by service.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
If you’re not allowed to laugh in Heaven…I don’t want to go there.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Life at its best is a creative synthesis of opposites in fruitful harmony.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
The basic thing about a man is not his specific but his fundamentum.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
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: Knowledge, Science, Religion
I feel that we will continue to have a non-violent movement, and we will continue to find the vast majority of Negroes committed to non-violence, at least as the best tactical approach and from a pragmatic point of view as the best strategy in dealing with the problem of racial injustice. Realism impels me to admit, however, that when there is justice and the pursuit of justice, violence appears, and where there is injustice and frustration, the potentialities for violence are greater, and I would like to strongly stress the point that the more we can achieve victories through non-violence, the more it will be possible to keep the non-violent discipline at the center of the movement. But the more we find individuals facing conditions of frustration, conditions of disappointment and seething despair as a result of the slow pace of things and the failure to change conditions, the more it will be possible for the apostles of violence to interfere.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
We must accept finite disappointment, but we must never lose infinite hope.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Acceptance, Hope
Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Justice is love correcting that which revolts against love.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
We are reaching out for the daybreak of freedom and justice and equality.
—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.
Love is the supreme unifying principle of life.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
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.
Topics: Freedom, Society
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
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, Helpfulness, Greatness & Great Things, Virtues, Helping
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