“Perhaps your own reiterated cries deafen you to the voice you hoped to hear”

“I do believe that, where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence.”

“My father once told me that respect for the truth comes close to being the basis for all morality. ‘Something”

“No man who cares about originality will ever be original. It's the man who's only thinking about doing a good job or telling the truth who becomes really original -- and doesn't notice it.”

“There is thing you can do but I can not and there is thing I can but you can not; so let us make something beautiful together”

“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.”

“Truth has drawn me into the field of politics; and I can say without the slightest hesitation, and yet in all humility, that those who say that religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion means.”

“Man approaches God most nearly when he is in one sense least like God. For what can be more unlike than fullness and need, sovereignty and humility, righteousness and penitence, limitless power and a cry for help?”

“Death is not the end of the road—it is merely a gateway to eternal life beyond the grave.” 

“Something is happening in Memphis; something is happening in our world. And you know, if I were standing at the beginning of time, with the possibility of taking a kind of general and panoramic view of the whole of human history up to now, and the Almighty said to me, "Martin Luther King, which age would you like to live in?" I would take my mental flight by Egypt and I would watch God's children in their magnificent trek from the dark dungeons of Egypt through, or rather across the Red Sea, through the wilderness on toward the promised land. And in spite of its magnificence, I wouldn't stop there. I would move on by Greece and take my mind to Mount Olympus. And I would see Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, Euripides and Aristophanes assembled around the Parthenon. And I would watch them around the Parthenon as they discussed the great and eternal issues of reality. But I wouldn't stop there. I would go on, even to the great heyday of the Roman Empire. And I would see developments around there, through various emperors and leaders. But I wouldn't stop there. I would even come up to the day of the Renaissance, and get a quick picture of all that the Renaissance did for the cultural and aesthetic life of man. But I wouldn't stop there. I would even go by the way that the man for whom I am named had his habitat. And I would watch Martin Luther as he tacked his ninety-five theses on the door at the church of Wittenberg. But I wouldn't stop there. I would come on up even to 1863, and watch a vacillating President by the name of Abraham Lincoln finally come to the conclusion that he had to sign the Emancipation Proclamation. But I wouldn't stop there. I would even come up to the early thirties, and see a man grappling with the problems of the bankruptcy of his nation. And come with an eloquent cry that we have nothing to fear but "fear itself." But I wouldn't stop there.”

“All humanity is one undivided and indivisible family. I cannot detach myself from the wickedest soul.”

“To punish me for my contempt for authority, fate made me an authority myself.”

“You didn't fail... You just didn't use the right method. It's neither hail nor storm... It's just a stir that precedes the settlement of your destiny. Believe that you will not remain on the ground. Wake up and try again!”

“Good thoughts and actions can never produce bad results; bad thoughts and actions can never produce good results.”

“We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”