“There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I, and others, have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor -- both black and white -- through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam and I watched the program broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
"Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”
―
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
“And somewhere along the way it is necessary to see that human progress never rolls in on the wheels of inevitability. It comes through the tireless efforts and the persistent work of dedicated individuals who are willing to be co-workers with God.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“This is the unusual thing about nonviolence -- nobody is defeated, everybody shares in the victory.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“Commit yourself to the noble struggle for equal rights. You will make a greater person of yourself.”
―
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
“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
“All who call on God in true faith, earnestly from the heart, will certainly be heard, and will receive what they have asked and desired.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“I came to the conclusion that there is an existential moment in your life when you must decide to speak for yourself; nobody else can speak for you.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
