“I am convinced that even violent temperaments can be channeled through nonviolent discipline, if they can act constructively and express through an effective channel their very legitimate anger.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“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
“Take the first step in faith, you don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“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
“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.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“The choice is not between violence and nonviolence but between nonviolence and nonexistence.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“The soft-minded man always fears change. He feels security in the status quo, and he has an almost morbid fear of the new. For him, the greatest pain is the pain of a new idea.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“And when you discover what you will be in your life, set out to do it as if God Almighty called you at this particular moment in history to do it. Don’t just set out to do a good job. Set out to do such a good job that the living, the dead or the unborn couldn’t do it any better. If it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, sweep streets like Beethoven composed music, sweep streets like Leontyne Price sings before the Metropolitan Opera. Sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will have to pause and say: Here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“In our glorious fight for civil rights, we must guard against being fooled by false slogans, such as 'right-to-work.' It provides no 'rights' and no 'works.' Its purpose is to destroy labor unions and the freedom of collective bargaining…. We demand this fraud be stopped.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“It is precisely this collision of immoral power with powerless morality which constitutes the major crisis of our times.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“Everyone has the power for greatness, not for fame but greatness, because greatness is determined by service.”
―
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
