Quotes By Martin Luther King Jr

That is what was known as the Populist Movement. The leaders of this movement began awakening the poor white masses and the former Negro slaves to the fact that they were being fleeced by the emerging Bourbon interests.

You see, it was a simple thing to keep the poor white masses working for near-starvation wages in the years that followed the Civil War. Why, if the poor white plantation or mill worker became dissatisfied with his low wages, the plantation or mill owner would merely threaten to fire him and hire former Negro slaves and pay him even less.

A president born in the South had the sensitivity to feel the will of the country, and in an address that will live in history as one of the most passionate pleas for human rights ever made by a president of our nation, he pledged the might of the federal government to cast off the centuries-old blight.

So we're going to stand up right here amid horses. We're going to stand up right here, in Alabama, amid the billy-clubs. We're going to stand up right here in Alabama amid police dogs, if they have them. We're going to stand up amid tear gas! We're going to stand up amid anything they can muster up, letting the world know that we are determined to be free!

Deep down in our nonviolent creed is the conviction that there are some things so dear, some things so precious, some things so eternally true that they're worth dying for.

Love is the supreme unifying principle of life.

Who are the least of these? The least of these are those who still find themselves smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in an affluent society.

A great nation is a compassionate nation.

Who are the least of these? They are the thousands of individuals who see life as a long and desolate corridor with no exit sign.

Love is basic for the very survival of mankind.

Who are the least of these? They are the little boys and little girls who grow up with clouds of inferiority floating in their little mental skies because they know that they are caught in conditions of economic depravation.

Who are the least of these? They are the individuals who are caught in the fatigue of despair. And somehow if we are to be a great nation, we must be concerned about the least of these, our brothers.

Somehow in the final analysis, as long as there is poverty in the world, nobody can be totally rich.

Racial segregation must be seen for what it is - and that is an evil system, a new form of slavery covered up with certain niceties of complexity.

Segregation is evil because it relegates persons to the status of things. And segregation is evil because it stigmatizes the segregated as an untouchable in a caste system.

We've been in the mountain of segregation long enough and it is time for all men of goodwill to say now, "We are through with segregation now, henceforth, and forever more.

No nation can rise to its full moral maturity so long as it subjects a segment of its citizenry on the basis of race or color.

Racial injustice is a cancer in the body politic which must be removed before our moral health can be realized.

Now it is time for us to move on to that great and noble realm of justice and brotherhood. That is the great struggle taking place in our nation today. It isn't a struggle just based on a lot of noise; it is a struggle to save the soul of our nation.

Each of us lives in two realms, the "within" and the "without." The within of our lives is somehow found in the realm of ends, the without in the realm of means.