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.
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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 time is always right to do what’s right.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Time, Revenge, The Present, Character, Discipline, Virtue, Vision, Kindness, Virtues, Integrity
Love is the supreme unifying principle of life.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Violence ends by defeating itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Ultimately a genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus, but a molder of consensus.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Courage, Vision
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: Violence, Humanity
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.
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: Virtues, Helping, Helpfulness, Greatness, Greatness & Great Things
It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence in this world; it’s nonviolence or nonexistence.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Non-cooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good.
—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.
Life has its beginning and its maturity comes into being when an individual rises above self to something greater.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
We must accept finite disappointment, but we must never lose infinite hope.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Hope, Acceptance
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, Goodness, Tolerance
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
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.
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.
Justice is love correcting that which revolts against love.
—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.
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.
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: Society, Freedom
We are reaching out for the daybreak of freedom and justice and equality.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
The best way to solve any problem is to remove the cause.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
As long as the mind is enslaved, the body can never be free.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
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: Thinking, Thoughts, Thought
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Justice
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
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: Work, Society
If you’re not allowed to laugh in Heaven…I don’t want to go there.
—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
In every age and every generation, men have envisioned a promised land.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
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.
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: Vision, Commitment, Death, Dedication, Dying, Nature
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.
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, Greatness & Great Things, Love, Virtues
I am coming to feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than the people of goodwill. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people. We must come to see that human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability. It comes through the tireless efforts and persistent work of men willing to be co-workers with God, and without this hard work time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, and forever realize that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy, and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Goodness, Time Management, Time, Spending time wisely, Acceptance, Integrity
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.
Life’s most persistent and urgent question is: “What are you doing for others?”
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Benevolence, Questions, Outreach, Service, Sacrifice
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.
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