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Inspirational Quotations

by RightAttitudes.com

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

Inspirational Quotations 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.

The good neighbor looks beyond the external accidents and discerns those inner qualities that make all men human and, therefore, brothers.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Neighbors

Life at its best is a creative synthesis of opposites in fruitful harmony.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.

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

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: Thought, Thoughts, Thinking, Reason

It’s not only necessary to know how to go about loving your enemies, but also to go down into the question of why we should love our enemies. I think the first reason that we should love our enemies, and I think this was at the very center of Jesus’ thinking, is this: that hate for hate only intensifies the existence of hate and evil in the universe. If I hit you and you hit me and I hit you back and you hit me back and go on, you see, that goes on ad infinitum. It just never ends. Somewhere somebody must have a little sense, and that’s the strong person. The strong person is the person who can cut off the chain of hate, the chain of evil.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Hate

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

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

Non-cooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.

War is a poor chisel to carve out tomorrow.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: War

Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Oppression

Riots are the voices of the unheard.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Revolution, Revolutionaries, Revolutions

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, Love, Hate, Light, Tolerance

Almost always, the creative dedicated minority has made the world better.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Dedication

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.

The more there are riots, the more repressive action will take place, and the more we face the danger of a right-wing takeover and eventually a fascist society.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Revolutions, Revolution

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

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.

Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Foolishness, Ignorance, Stupidity

Philanthropy is commendable, but it must not cause the philanthropist to overlook the circumstances of economic injustice which make philanthropy necessary.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Philanthropy

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

Discrimination is a hellhound that gnaws at Negroes in every waking moment of their lives to remind them that the lie of their inferiority is accepted as truth in the society dominating them.
—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.

Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Optimism, Thought, Tomorrow, Reason, Belief

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.

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

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, Peace, Violence

The means by which we live have outdistanced the ends for which we live. Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Humanity, Science, Power, Weapon

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

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

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.

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