Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend.
– Martin Luther King Jr.
Love
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
– Martin Luther King Jr.
Love
Whatever your life’s work is, do it well.
– Martin Luther King Jr.
Life
Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.
– Martin Luther King Jr.
Faith
If a man hasn’t discovered something that he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.
– Martin Luther King Jr.
Life | Purpose
The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
– Martin Luther King Jr.
Character | Comfort
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.
Kindness | Helping
We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.
– Martin Luther King Jr.
Family | Foolishness
Nonviolence means avoiding not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. You not only refuse to shoot a man, but you refuse to hate him.
– Martin Luther King Jr.
Hatred
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.
Kindness
Science investigates – religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge which is power. Religion gives man wisdom which is control.
– Martin Luther King Jr.
Religion | Wisdom | Knowledge
A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.
– Martin Luther King Jr.
Leadership
Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal.
– Martin Luther King Jr.
Peace | Goals
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.
Contentment | Music
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. 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.
Forgiveness | Hatred | Enemies
We may have all come on different ships, but we’re in the same boat now.
– Martin Luther King Jr.
Family
An individual who breaks a 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 the law.
– Martin Luther King Jr.
Conscience | Community
Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
– Martin Luther King Jr.
Ignorance
Rarely do we find men who willingly 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.
Ignorance | Men
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.
Perseverance | Goals | Sacrifice
Riots are the voices of the unheard.
– Martin Luther King Jr.
Hope
There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love.
– Martin Luther King Jr.
Love | Disappointment
I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.
– Martin Luther King Jr.
Love | Hatred
Non-violence is a powerful and just weapon. It is a weapon unique in history, which cuts without wounding and enobles the man who wields it. It is a sword that heals.
– Martin Luther King Jr.
Perseverance | Healing
Never succumb to the temptation of bitterness.
– Martin Luther King Jr.
Temptation | Bitterness
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.
Perseverance | Faith
Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illumines it.
– Martin Luther King Jr.
Hatred | Love
We who in engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive.
– Martin Luther King Jr.
Ignorance
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.
Good and Evil | Hatred | Enemies
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.
Perseverance | Justice
The Negro needs the white man to free him from his fears. The white man needs the Negro to free him from his guilt.
– Martin Luther King Jr.
Fear | Freedom
In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.
– Martin Luther King Jr.
Friendship | Enemies
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.
Apathy
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.
Conscience | Justice
I want to be the white man’s brother, not his brother-in-law.
– Martin Luther King Jr.
Family
Seeing is not always believing.
– Martin Luther King Jr.
Ignorance | Believing
Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.
– Martin Luther King Jr.
Life
Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.
– Martin Luther King Jr.
Justice | Freedom
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
– Martin Luther King Jr.
Justice
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.
– Martin Luther King Jr.
Struggles | Change | Freedom
Means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek.
– Martin Luther King Jr.
Holiness
Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.
– Martin Luther King Jr.
Good and Evil
When you are right you cannot be too radical; when you are wrong, you cannot be too conservative.
– Martin Luther King Jr.
Good and Evil
The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. The nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.
– Martin Luther King Jr.
Perseverance
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.
Finances | Charity
It is incontestable and deplorable that Negroes have committed crimes; but they are derivative crimes. They are born of the greater crimes of the white society.
– Martin Luther King Jr.
Hypocrisy
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit together at the table of brotherhood.
– Martin Luther King Jr.
Justice
The moral arc of the universe bends at the elbow of justice.
– Martin Luther King Jr.
Justice
Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’
– Martin Luther King Jr.
Service
Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal.
– Martin Luther King Jr.
War
If we are to go forward, we must go back and rediscover those precious values – that all reality hinges on moral foundations and that all reality has spiritual control.
– Martin Luther King Jr.
Morality
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.
Love
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.
Faithful
The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.
– Martin Luther King Jr.
Apathy
Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.
– Martin Luther King Jr.
Life
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.
War | Money
It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that’s pretty important.
– Martin Luther King Jr.
Justice
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.
Justice
The hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who remain neutral in times of great moral conflict.
– Martin Luther King Jr.
Apathy | Morality
Property is intended to serve life, and no matter how much we surround it with rights and respect, it has no personal being. It is part of the earth man walks on. It is not man.
– Martin Luther King Jr.
Life
We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.
– Martin Luther King Jr.
Hope
The past is prophetic in that it asserts loudly that wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.
– Martin Luther King Jr.
War
We must constantly build dykes of courage to hold back the flood of fear.
– Martin Luther King Jr.
Courage
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.
Education | Character | Criticism
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.
Love | Revenge
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.
Ignorance
I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.
– Martin Luther King Jr.
Truth | Love
We must concentrate not merely on the negative expulsion of war but the positive affirmation of peace.
– Martin Luther King Jr.
War
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.
– Martin Luther King Jr.
Apathy
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.
Justice | Discontentment
We must use time creatively.
– Martin Luther King Jr.
Achievement
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.
Character
A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on the installment plan.
– Martin Luther King Jr.
Character
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.
Charity
There is nothing more tragic than to find an individual bogged down in the length of life, devoid of breadth.
– Martin Luther King Jr.
Life
We are not makers of history. We are made by history.
– Martin Luther King Jr.
History
A lie cannot live.
– Martin Luther King Jr.
Lying
All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.
– Martin Luther King Jr.
Achievement | Examples
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.
Charity
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.
History | Apathy
The limitation of riots, moral questions aside, is that they cannot win and their participants know it. Hence, rioting is not revolutionary but reactionary because it invites defeat. It involves an emotional catharsis, but it must be followed by a sense of futility.
– Martin Luther King Jr.
Morality
A right delayed is a right denied.
– Martin Luther King Jr.
Justice
Without love, benevolence becomes egotism.
– Martin Luther King Jr.
Love
If physical death is the price that I must pay to free my white brothers and sisters from a permanent death of the spirit, then nothing can be more redemptive.
– Martin Luther King Jr.
Perseverance
Everything that we see is a shadow cast by that which we do not see.
– Martin Luther King Jr.
Life
Agape is disinterested love. Agape does not begin by discriminating between worthy and unworthy people, or any qualities people possess. It begins by loving others for their sakes. Therefore, agape makes no distinction between friend and enemy; it is directed toward both.
– Martin Luther King Jr.
Love | Enemies
The quality, not the longevity, of one’s life is what is important.
– Martin Luther King Jr.
Life
Almost always, the creative dedicated minority has made the world better.
– Martin Luther King Jr.
Perseverance
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.
Morality | Power
At the center of non-violence stands the principle of love.
– Martin Luther King Jr.
Love
It is not enough to say we must not wage war. It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it.
– Martin Luther King Jr.
War | Sacrifice
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.
War
War is a poor chisel to carve out tomorrow.
– Martin Luther King Jr.
War
All progress is precarious, and the solution of one problem brings us face to face with another problem.
– Martin Luther King Jr.
Perseverance
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.
Justice
Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.
– Martin Luther King Jr.
Selfishness
The hope of a secure and livable world lies with disciplined nonconformists who are dedicated to justice, peace and brotherhood.
– Martin Luther King Jr.
Justice | Discipline