Martin Luther King, Jr. Quotes
Civil Rights Activist
A man who won't die for something is not fit to live.
A lie cannot live.
We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.
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.
A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on the installment plan.
If you will protest courageously, and yet with dignity and Christian love, when the history books are written in future generations, the historians will have to pause and say, 'There lived a great people-a black people-who injected new meaning and dignity into the veins of civilization'.
Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into friend.
All progress is precarious, and the solution of one problem brings us face to face with another problem.
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.
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.
Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.
Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can't ride you unless your back is bent.
Life's most urgent question is: what are you doing for others?
One of the greatest casualties of the war in Vietnam is the Great Society...shot down on the battlefield of Vietnam.
Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.
Philanthropy is commendable, but it must not cause the philanthropist to overlook the circumstances of economic injustice which make philanthropy necessary.