Quotes By Martin Luther King Jr

If our nation had done nothing more in its whole history than to create just two documents, its contribution to civilization would be imperishable. The first of these documents is the Declaration of Independence and the other is that which we are here to honor tonight, the Emancipation Proclamation.

Less than a century ago the laborer had no rights, little or no respect, and led a life which was socially submerged and barren.

Communism exploits the dreadful philosophy that the end justifies the means. It enunciates movingly the theory of a classless society, but alas! its methods for achieving this noble end are all too often ignoble.

If integration is to be a reality, the Negro must struggle for it. And so the Negro must continue to work through legislation; he must continue to work to double the number of registered voters, so that he political climate can be changed; he must continue to work through the courts, and get the law clarified and the Constitution clear on this issue.

It may be true that the law cannot change the heart, but it can restrain the heartless, and this is what we often so and we have to do in society through legislation.

We must depend on religion and education to change bad internal attitudes, but we need legislation to control the external effects of those bad internal attitudes. And so there is a need for meaningful civil right legislation.

A court order can only declare rights; it can never thoroughly deliver them. And only when people themselves begin to act, are rights which are on thin paper given life blood. And so the Negro must supplement all that is done through legislation, through voting, and through the courts with non-violent direct action.

The beauty of non-violence is that it is possible to fight war without violence, and it is possible to struggle for that which is right with love in one's heart.

Lying, violence, murder, and torture are considered to be justifiable means to achieve the millennial end. Is this an unfair indictment? Listen to the words of Lenin, the real tactician of Communist theory: 'We must be ready to employ trickery, deceit, lawbreaking, withholding and concealing truth.

Any Christian who blindly accepts the opinions of the majority and in fear and timidity follows a path of expediency and social approval is a mental and spiritual slave.

There is little hope for us until we become toughminded enough to break loose from the shackles of prejudice, half-truths, and downright ignorance.

But we must not stop with the cultivation of a tough mind. The gospel also demands a tender heart. ... What is more tragic than to see a person who has risen to the disciplined heights of toughmindedness but has at the same time sunk to the passionless depths of hardheartedness?

When we were in the midnight of dread plagues and diseases, science, through surgery, sanitation, and the wonder drugs, ushered in the bright day of physical health, thereby prolonging our lives and making for greater security and physical well-being.

According to Communist theory, matter, not mind or spirit, speaks the last word in the universe. Such a philosophy is avowedly secularistic and atheistic. Under it, God is merely a figment of the imagination, religion is a product of fear and ignorance, and the church is an invention of the rulers to control the masses.

The greatness of our God lies in the fact that He is both toughminded and tenderhearted.

A nation or a civilization that continues to produce softminded men purchases its own spiritual death on an installment plan.

The tough-minded individual is astute and discerning. He has a strong austere quality that makes for firmness of purpose and solidness of commitment.

The alternative to disarmament, the alternative to suspension of nuclear tests, the alternative to strengthening the United Nations and disarming the whole world may well be a civilization plunged into the abyss of annihilation.

Communism attributes ultimate value to the state. Man is made for the state and not the state for man. One may object, saying that in Communist theory the state is an 'interim reality,' which will 'wither away' when the classless society emerges. True--in theory; but it is also true that, while it lasts, the state is the end.

The beauty of non-violence is that is makes it possible for the individual to struggle to secure moral ends through moral means.