“Instinctively we struck out for dignity first because personal degradation as an inferior human being was even more keenly felt than material privation.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man's sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“Racial injustice around the world. Poverty. War. When man solves these three great problems he will have squared his moral progress with his scientific progress. And, more importantly, he will have learned the practical art of living in harmony.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“You may well ask: “Why direct action? Why sit-ins, marches and so forth? Isn’t negotiation a better path?” You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue.
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“Life’s persistent and most urgent question is ‘What are you doing for others?’ ”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“The greatest purveyor of violence in the world : My own Government, I can not be Silent.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“Take the first step in faith. You don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even the enemy”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“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.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
