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.
The basic thing about a man is not his specific but his fundamentum.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
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.
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
Non-cooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Not everybody can be famous, but everybody can be great, because greatness is determined by service.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Justice is love correcting that which revolts against love.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love. It destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible.
—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.
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.
Each of us is something of a schizophrenic personality, tragically divided against ourselves.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Self-Discovery
A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on an installment plan.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Civilization
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.
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: Forgiveness, Power
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.
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.
The richer we have become materially, the poorer we have become morally and spiritually. 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.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
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.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Society, Work
We must accept finite disappointment, but we must never lose infinite hope.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Hope, Acceptance
Rarely do we find men who willingly to engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Thoughts, Thought, Thinking
Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.
—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
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.
Keep moving. Let nothing slow you up. Move on with dignity and honor and respectability.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Every genuine expression of love grows out of a consistent and total surrender to God.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Life has its beginning and its maturity comes into being when an individual rises above self to something greater.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Life’s most persistent and urgent question is: “What are you doing for others?”
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Service, Sacrifice, Benevolence, Questions, Outreach
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.
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.
I just want to leave a committed life behind.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
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.
The time is always right to do what’s right.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Integrity, Time, Virtues, Kindness, Virtue, Vision, Discipline, The Present, Revenge, Character
It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence in this world; it’s nonviolence or nonexistence.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
When people are self-centered, they are self-centered because they are seeking attention, they want to be admired and this is the way they set out to do it. But in the process, because of their self-centeredness, they are not admired; they are mawkish and people don’t want to be bothered with them. And so the very thing they seek, they never get. And they end up frustrated and unhappy and disillusioned.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Only in the darkness can you see the stars.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
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 & Great Things, Helping, Greatness, Helpfulness, Virtues
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.
True peace is not merely the absence of tension: it is the presence of justice.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Absence, Justice
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
Violence ends by defeating itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
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