Seeing is not always believing.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power.
We have guided missiles and misguided men.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
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.
Human salvation lies in the hands
of the creatively maladjusted.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
I want to be the white man's brother, not his brother-in-law.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
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.
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted,
every hill and mountain shall be made low,
the rough places will be made straight
and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed
and all flesh shall see it together.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
If a man is called to be a street sweeper,
he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted,
or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry.
He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts
of heaven and earth will pause to say,
here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent
about things that matter.
- 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.
Faith is taking the first step,
even when you don't see the whole staircase.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek,
but a means by which we arrive at that goal.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
The art of acceptance is the art of making someone
who has just done you a small favor
wish that he might have done you a greater one.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
History will have to record that the greatest tragedy
of this period of social transition
was not the strident clamor of the bad people,
but the appalling silence of the good people.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
Pity may represent little more
than the impersonal concern
which prompts the mailing of a check,
but true sympathy is the personal concern
which demands the giving of one's soul.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
Whatever your life's work is, do it well.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable...
Every step toward the goal of justice
requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle;
the tireless exertions and
passionate concern of dedicated individuals.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies,
but the silence of our friends.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
The moral arc of the universe
bends at the elbow of justice.
- 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.
We will remember not the words of our enemies,
but the silence of our friends.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
Love is the only force capable of
transforming an enemy into friend.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
If physical death is the price
that I must pay to free my brothers and sisters
from a permanent death of the spirit,
then nothing can be more redemptive.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound
to the starless midnight of racism and war
that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood
can never become a reality...
I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love
will have the final word.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
The means we use must be as pure
as the ends we seek.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
I just want to do God's will.
And he's allowed me to go to the mountain.
And I've looked over, and I've seen the promised land!
I may not get there with you,
but I want you to know tonight that
we as a people will get to the promised land.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
A riot is, at bottom, the language of the unheard.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
Have we not come to such an impasse in the modern world
that we must love our enemies - or else?
The chain reaction of evil -
hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars -
must be broken, or else we shall be plunged
into the dark abyss of annihilation.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus
but a molder of consensus.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
I have a Dream...
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
Everything that we see is a shadow
cast by that which we do not see.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
All progress is precarious, and the solution
of one problem brings us face to face with another problem.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was:
"If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?"
But... the good Samaritan reversed the question:
"If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?"
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
We must learn to live together as brothers
or perish together as fools.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
What are you doing for others?
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
Nothing in all the world is more dangerous
than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
The hottest place in Hell is reserved for those
who remain neutral in times of great moral conflict.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
I look to a day when people will not be judged
by the color of their skin,
but by the content of their character.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
We must build dikes of courage
to hold back the flood of fear.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
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.
- 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.
I submit to you that if a man hasn't
discovered something that he will die for,
he isn't fit to live.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
The past is prophetic in that it asserts loudly
that wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love.
- 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.
An individual has not started living
until he can rise above the narrow confines
of his individualistic concerns
to the broader concerns of all humanity.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
One of the greatest casualties
of the war in Vietnam is the Great Society...
shot down on the battlefield of Vietnam.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
One who breaks an unjust law
that 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.
Almost always, the creative dedicated minority
has made the world better.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
I submit that an individual who breaks the law
that conscience tells him is unjust
and willingly accepts the penalty by staying in jail
to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice,
is in reality expressing the very highest respect for law.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
That old law about "an eye for an eye" leaves everybody blind.
The time is always right to do the right thing.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day
live in a nation where they will
not be judged by the color of their skin,
but by the content of their character.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it
as he who helps to perpetrate it.
He who accepts evil without protesting against it
is really cooperating with it.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
A man who won't die for something is not fit to live.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
Science gives man knowledge, which is power;
religion gives man wisdom, which is control.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
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.
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.
Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it.
Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it.
Hatred darkens life; love illumines it.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
We must use time creatively.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
Law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice
and when they fail in this purpose
they become the dangerously structured dams
that block the flow of social progress.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
A nation that continues year after year
to spend more money on military defense
than on programs of social uplift
is approaching spiritual doom.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
The function of education is to teach one
to think intensively and to think critically.
Intelligence plus character - that is the goal of true education.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
Life's most persistent and urgent question is,
'What are you doing for others?'
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
The sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent
will not pass until there is
an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
Never succumb to the temptation of bitterness.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
Well, I don't know what will happen now.
We've got some difficult days ahead.
But it doesn't matter with me now.
Because I've been to the mountaintop.
And I don't mind. Like any man,
I would like to live a long life.
Longevity has its place.
But I'm not concerned about that now.
I just want to do God's will.
And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain.
And I've looked over.
And I've seen the promised land.
I may not get there with you.
But I want you to know tonight, that we,
as a people, will get to the promised land.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
The quality, not the longevity, of one's life is what is important.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
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.
We may have all come on different ships,
but we're in the same boat now.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
The time is always right to do what is right.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
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May the world be kind to you,
and may your own thoughts be gentle upon yourself.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
All materials & writings are copyright © Jonathan Lockwood Huie, except for quotes and other specifically identified material which belong to their respective copyright holders if applicable.