“Not only will we have to repent for the sins of bad people; but we also will have to repent for the appalling silence of good people.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection. I had hoped that the white moderate would”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“The absence of brutality and unregenerate evil is not the presence of justice. To stay murder is not the same thing as to ordain brotherhood.”
―
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
“One cannot worship the false god of nationalism and the God of Christianity at the same time. .”
―
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
“This is the unusual thing about nonviolence -- nobody is defeated, everybody shares in the victory.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“To be a Christian without prayer is no more possible than to be alive without breathing.”
―
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
“One of the grat tragedies of life is that men seldom bridge the gulf between practice and profession, between doing and saying. A persistent schizophrenia leaves so many of us tragically divided against ourselves. On the one hand, we proudly profess certain sublime and noble principles, but on the other hand, we sadly practise the very antithesis of these principles. How often are our lives characterised by a high blood pressure of creeds and an anaemia of deeds! We talk eloquently about our commitment to the principles of Christianity, and yet our lives are saturated with the practices of paganism. We proclaim our devotion to democracy, but we sadly practise the very opposite of the democratic creed. We talk passionately about peace, and at the same time we assiduously prepare for war. We make our fervent pleas for the high road of justice, and then we tread unflinchingly the low road of injustice. This strange dichotomy, this agonising gulf between the ought and the is, represents the tragic theme of man's earthly pilgrimage.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“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
“There is no noise as powerful as the sound of the marching feet of a determined people.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
