“The saving of our world from pending doom will come, not through the complacent adjustment of the conforming majority, but through the creative maladjustment of a nonconforming minority.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“It’s all right to tell a man to lift himself by his own bootstraps, but it is cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because his conscience tells him it is right....”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“Today it is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence; it is either nonviolence or nonexistence.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“These are the times for real choices and not false ones. We are at the moment when our lives must be placed on the line if our nation is to survive its own folly. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“I have consistently preached that nonviolence demands that the means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“I have a dream!
To be free at last!
Free at last!
Free at last.
And if a man has nothing to die for,
Then his life is worth nothing.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”
―
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
“Violence brings only temporary victories; violence, by creating many more social problems than it solves, never brings permanent peace.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“The ultimate tragedy of Birmingham was not the brutality of the bad people, but the silence of the good people.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
