“There is a pressing need for a liberalism in the North which is truly liberal, a liberalism that firmly believes in integration in its own community as well as in the Deep South. It is one thing to agree that the goal of integration is morally and legally right; it is another thing to commit oneself positively and actively to the ideal of integration—the former is intellectual assent, the latter is actual belief. These are days that demand practices to match professions. This is no day to pay lip service to integration; we must pay life service to it.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“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
“If you can not fly then run. If you can not run then walk. If you can not walk then crawl, but whatever you do keep moving forward”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“One has not only a legal, but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“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.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“Never, never be afraid to do what's right, especially if the well-being of a person or animal is at stake. Society's punishments are small compared to the wounds we inflict on our soul when we look the other way.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“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
“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”
―
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
“Since crime often grows out of a sense of futility and despair, Negro parents must be urged to give their children the love, attention, and sense of belonging that a segregated society deprives them of.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“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
“It is precisely this collision of immoral power with powerless morality which constitutes the major crisis of our times.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively. More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co-workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
