Quotes By Martin Luther King Jr

Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war.

As I have walked among the desperate, rejected and angry young men I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they asked - and rightly so - what about Vietnam?

Some people are suffering. Some people are hungry this morning. Some people are still living with segregation and discrimination this morning. I'm going to preach about it. I'm going to fight for them. I'll die for them if necessary, because I got my guidelines clear.

The God that I serve and the God that called me to preach told me that every now and then I'll have to go to jail for them. Every now and then I'll have to agonize and suffer for the freedom of his children. I even may have to die for it. But if that's necessary, I'd rather follow the guidelines of God than to follow the guidelines of men.

The church is called to set free those that are captive, to set free those that are victims of the slavery of segregation and discrimination, those who are caught up in the slavery of fear and prejudice.

The word of God is upon me like fire shut up in my bones, and when God's word gets upon me, I've got to say it, I've got to tell it all over everywhere. And God has called me to deliver those that are in captivity.

There is scarcely anything more tragic in human life than a child who is not wanted. That which should be a blessing becomes a curse for parent and child.

There is nothing inherent in the Negro mentality which creates this condition. Their poverty causes it. When Negroes have been able to ascend economically, statistics reveal they plan their families with even greater care than whites. Negroes of higher economic and educational status actually have fewer children than white families in the same circumstances.

Negroes do not seek political control by this means. They seek only what they are entitled to and do not wish for domination purchased at the cost of human misery. Negroes were once bred by slave owners to be sold as merchandise. They do not welcome any solution which involves population breeding as a weapon. They are instinctively sympathetic to all who offer methods that will improve their lives and offer them fair opportunity to develop and advance as all other people in our society.

Together we can and should unite our strength for the wise preservation, not of races in general, but of the one race we all constitute - the human race.

A Christian movement in an age of revolution cannot allow itself to be limited by geographic boundaries. We must be as concerned about the poor in India as we are about the poor of Indiana.

I know now that Jesus is right, that love is the way. And this is why John said, "God is love," so that he who hates does not know God, but he who loves at that moment has the key that opens the door to the meaning of ultimate reality.

Oh yes, love is the way. Love is the only absolute. More and more I see this. I've seen too much hate to want to hate myself; hate is too great a burden to bear.

Hate distorts the personality. Hate does something to the soul that causes one to lose his objectivity. The man who hates can't think straight; the man who hates can't reason right; the man who hates can't see right; the man who hates can't walk right.

The dream has been shattered, and I have had my nightmarish experiences, but I tell you this morning once more that I haven't lost the faith.

Ultimately a genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus, but a molder of consensus.

On some positions, Cowardice asks the question, "Is it safe?" Expediency asks the question, "Is it politic?" And Vanity comes along and asks the question, "Is it popular?" But Conscience asks the question "Is it right?" And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must do it because Conscience tells him it is right.

I believe today that there is a need for all people of good will to come together with a massive act of conscience and say in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "We ain't goin' study war no more." This is the challenge facing modern man.

I believe that we, as Negroes, are going to gain our freedom in America because the goal of America is freedom.

We have inherited a big house, a great world house in which we have to live together - black and white, Easterners and Westerners, Gentiles and Jews, Protestants and Catholics, Moslem and Hindu. If we all learn to do this we, in a real sense, will remain awake through a great revolution.