“Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter. I won't have any money to leave behind. I won't have the fine and luxurious things of life to leave behind. But I just want to leave a committed life behind. And that's all I want to say.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“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
“God is able to give you the power to endure that which cannot be changed... Why be anxious? Come what may, God is able.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“True peace is not merely the absence of tension: it is the presence of justice.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“A man who does not have something for which he is willing to die is not fit to live.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“The only weapon that we have in our hands this evening is the weapon of protest. That's all.”
―
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
“My friends, we cannot win the respect of the white people of the South or elsewhere if we are willing to trade the future of our children for our personal safety or comfort. Moreover, we must learn that passively to accept an unjust system is to cooperate with that system, and thereby to become a participant in its evil. ... 'Put up thy sword.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“I am tired of seeing people battered and bruised and bloody, injured and jumped on, along the Jericho Roads of life.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“Use me, God. Show me how to take who I am, who I want to be, and what I can do, and use it for a purpose greater than myself.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
