If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy
must read Vietnam. It can never be saved so long as it destroys
the hopes of men the world over.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Beyond Vietnam lecture, 4 April 1968. |
All progress is precarious, and the solution of one problem
brings us face to face with another problem.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Strength to Love, 1963. |
If a man is called a streetsweeper, he should sweep streets
even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or
Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that
all the hosts of heaven and Earth will pause to say, Here lived
a great streetsweeper who did his job well.
Martin Luther King Jr. |
We are the heirs of a past of rope, fire, and murder. I for
one am not ashamed of this past. My shame is for those who became
so inhuman that they could inflict this torture upon us.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?,
1967.. |
The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the
servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state.
It must be the guide and the critic of the state, and never
its tool. If the church does not recapture its prophetic zeal,
it will become an irrelevant social club without moral or spiritual
authority.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Strength to Love, 1963. |
The means by which we live have outdistanced the ends for
which we live. Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual
power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Strength to Love, 1963. |
Man is man because he is free to operate within the framework
of his destiny. He is free to deliberate, to make decisions,
and to choose between alternatives. He is distinguished from
animals by his freedom to do evil or to do good and to walk
the high road of beauty or tread the low road of ugly degeneracy.
Martin Luther King Jr.
The Measures of Man, 1959. |
To be a Negro in America is to hope against hope.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?,
1967. |
Being a Negro in America means trying to smile when you want
to cry. It means trying to hold on to physical life amid psychological
death. It means the pain of watching your children grow up with
clouds of inferiority in their mental skies. It means having
your legs cut off, and then being condemned for being a cripple.
It means seeing your mother and father spiritually murdered
by the slings and arrows of daily exploitation, and then being
hated for being an orphan.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?,
1967. |
Black Power alone is no more insurance against social injustice
than white power.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?,
1967. |
I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience
tells him is unjust, and is willing to accept the penalty of
imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community
over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect
for the law.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Letter from Birmingham Jail, April 1963. |
We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in
Germany was "legal" and everything the Hungarian freedom
fighters did in Hungary was "illegal.".
Martin Luther King Jr.
Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?,
1967. |
Each of us is something of a schizophrenic personality, tragically
divided against ourselves.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Strength to Love, 1963. |
"I" cannot reach fulfillment without "thou."
The self cannot be self without other selves. Self-concern without
other-concern is like a tributary that has no outward flow to
the ocean.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?,
1967. |
A nation that continues year after year to spend more money
on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching
spiritual death.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?,
1967. |
Ordinarily, a person leaving a courtroom with a conviction
behind him would wear a somber face. But I left with a smile.
I knew that I was a convicted criminal, but I was proud of my
crime.
Martin Luther King Jr.
March 22, 1956. |
The conservatives who say, "Let us not move so fast,"
and the extremists who say, "Let us go out and whip the
world," would tell you that they are as far apart as the
poles. But there is a striking parallel: They accomplish nothing;
for they do not reach the people who have a crying need to be
free.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Why We Can't Wait, 1963. |
I would be the last to condemn the thousands of sincere and
dedicated people outside the churches who have labored unselfishly
through various humanitarian movements to cure the world of
social evils, for I would rather a man be a committed humanist
than an uncommitted Christian.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Strength to Love, 1963. |
The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising
tides of hate. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations
and individuals that pursued that self-defeating path of hate.
Love is the key to the solution of the problems of the world.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Nobel Prize lecture, December 11, 1964. |
Will we march only to the music of time, or will we, risking
criticism and abuse, march to the soul-saving music of eternity?
Martin Luther King Jr.
Strength to Love, 1963. |
I still have a dream today that one day war will come to an
end, that men will beat their swords into plowshares and their
spears into pruning hooks, that nations will no longer rise
up against nations, neither will they study war any more.
Martin Luther King Jr.
The Trumpet of Conscience, 1968. |
We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by
our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee
liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest
Georgia and East Harlem.
Martin Luther King Jr.
The Trumpet of Conscience, 1968. |
As a teenager I had never been able to accept the fact of
having to go to the back of a bus or sit in the segregated section
of a train. The first time I had been seated behind a curtain
in a dining car, I felt as if the curtain had been dropped on
my selfhood.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story,
1958. |
We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the
vitriolic words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling
silence of the good people.
Martin Luther King Jr. |
The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was:
"If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?"
But... the good Samaritan reversed the question: "If I
do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?"
Martin Luther King Jr. |
I am convinced that the universe is under the control of a
loving purpose, and that in the struggle for righteousness man
has cosmic companionship.
Martin Luther King Jr. |
It was argued that the Negro was inferior by nature because
of Noah's curse upon the children of Ham.... The greatest blasphemy
of the whole ugly process was that the white man ended up making
God his partner in the exploitation of the Negro.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?,
1967. |
The Negro is the child of two cultures - Africa and America.
The problem is that in the search for wholeness all too many
Negroes seek to embrace only one side of their natures.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?,
1967. |
And so we shall have to do more than register and more than
vote; we shall have to create leaders who embody virtues we
can respect, who have moral and ethical principles we can applaud
with enthusiasm.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?,
1967. |