“The human heart is like a ship on a stormy sea driven about by winds blowing from all four corners of heaven.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“If you can't run then walk If you can't walk then crawl but whatever you do don't give up”
―
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
“Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood.”
―
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
“We have fought hard and long for integration, as I believe we should have, and I know that we will win. But I've come to believe we're integrating into a burning house.
I'm afraid that America may be losing what moral vision she may have had …. And I'm afraid that even as we integrate, we are walking into a place that does not understand that this nation needs to be deeply concerned with the plight of the poor and disenfranchised. Until we commit ourselves to ensuring that the underclass is given justice and opportunity, we will continue to perpetuate the anger and violence that tears at the soul of this nation.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“[Nonviolence] is directed against forces of evil rather than against persons who happen to be doing the evil. It is evil that the nonviolent resister seeks to defeat, not the persons victimized by evil.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“The slaveholders of America had devised with almost scientific precision their systems for keeping the Negro defenseless, emotionally and physically.”
―
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
“We cannot walk alone. And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
