Martin Luther King Jr. Quotes - Page 4

A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on the installment plan.

We cannot walk alone. And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back.

If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.

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.

The words 'bad timing' came to be ghosts haunting our every move in Birmingham. Yet people who used this argument were ignorant of the background of our planning...they did not realize that it was ridiculous to speak of timing when the clock of history showed that the Negro had already suffered one hundred years of delay.

Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars... Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.

Admitting the weighty problems and staggering disappointments, Christianity affirms that God is able to give us the power to meet them. He is able to give us inner equilibrium to stand tall amid the trials and burdens of life. He is able to provide inner peace amid our outer storms.

We did not hesitate to call our movement an army. But it was a special army, with no supplies but its sincerity, no uniform but its determination, no arsenal except its faith, no currency but its conscience.

We should never forget that everything Adolph Hitler did in Germany was "legal" and everything the Hungarian freedom fighers did in Hungary was "illegal." It was "illegal" to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler's Germany.

My call to the ministry was not a miraculous or supernatural something. On the contrary it was an inner urge calling me to serve humanity.

No person has the right to rain on your dreams.

Mother Dear, one day I'm going to turn this world upside down."

-From My Brother Martin, by Christine King Farris

Lightning makes no sound until it strikes.

We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools

The greatest purveyor of violence in the world : My own Government, I can not be Silent.

We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.

Injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere. Anyone who lives inside the US can never be considered an outsider anywhere in the country

There comes a time when people get tired of being trampled over by the iron feet of oppression.

Let us all hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away and the deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear-drenched communities, and in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty.

It may well be that we will have to repent in this generation. Not merely for the vitriolic words and the violent actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence and indifference of the good people who sit around and say, "Wait on time.