Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Martin Luther King, Jr. (American Civil Rights Leader)

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.

It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence in this world; it’s nonviolence or nonexistence.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.

A riot is the language of the unheard.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Revolution

When you are right you cannot be too radical; when you are wrong, you cannot be too conservative.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Right, Rightness

The hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who remain neutral in times of great moral conflict.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Hell, Morality

Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love. It destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.

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.
Topics: Personality, Hate

There is little hope for us until we become tough-minded enough to break loose from the shackles of prejudice, half-truths, and downright ignorance.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.

In no sense do I advocate evading or defying the law … That would lead to anarchy. An individual who breaks a law that his 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.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Protest, Consequences, Justice

Our loyalties must transcend our race, our tribe, our class, and our nation; and this means we must develop a world perspective.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.

Like a boil that must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed to the light of human conscience before it can be cured.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.

A little faith will bring your soul to heaven, but a lot of faith will bring heaven to your soul.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Faith

Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Faith

Violence ends by defeating itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.

All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence..
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Pain, Excellence, Work, Labor

One who condones evils is just as guilty as the one who perpetrates it.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Guilt

Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time; the need for mankind to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Oppression

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 don’t have to know about Plato and Aristotle… (or) Einstein’s Theory of Relativity … (or) 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.
Topics: Greatness & Great Things, Love, Virtues, Greatness

Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Hatred, Hate, 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.

Effects one directly, effects all indirectly.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Kindness

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: Death, Nature, Commitment, Dedication, Vision, Dying

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.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Churches, Religion

If you’re not allowed to laugh in Heaven…I don’t want to go there.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.

Those who are not looking for happiness are the most likely to find it, because those who are searching forget that the surest way to be happy is to seek happiness for others.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Happiness

Each of us is something of a schizophrenic personality, tragically divided against ourselves.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Self-Discovery

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.
Topics: Equality

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.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Reality, Love, Truth

My personal trials have also taught me the value of unmerited suffering. As my sufferings mounted I soon realized that there were two ways that I could respond to my situation: either to react with bitterness or seek to transform the suffering into a creative force. I decided to follow the latter course. Recognizing the necessity for suffering I have tried to make of it virtue. If only to save myself from bitterness, I have attempted to see my personal ordeals as an opportunity to transform myself and heal the people involved in the tragic situation, which now obtains. I have lived these last few years with the conviction that unearned suffering is redemptive.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Suffering

At the center of non-violence stands the principle of love.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Violence, Love

No nation can rise to its full moral maturity so long as it subjects a segment of its citizenry on the basis of race or color.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.

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