“Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“This is the unusual thing about nonviolence -- nobody is defeated, everybody shares in the victory.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“Injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere. Anyone who lives inside the US can never be considered an outsider anywhere in the country”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“Oh, the worst of all tragedies is not to die young, but to live until I am seventy-five and yet not ever truly to have lived.”
―
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
“If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michealangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare composed poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, “Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“Let us realize the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“It seems to me that this is the method that must guide the actions of the Negro in the present crisis in race relations. Through nonviolent resistance the Negro will be able to rise to the noble height of opposing the unjust system while loving the perpetrators of the system. The Negro must work passionately and unrelentingly for full stature as a citizen, but he must not use inferior methods to gain it. He must never come to terms with falsehood, malice, hate, or destruction.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr