Quotes By Martin Luther King Jr

Pity may represent little more than the impersonal concern which prompts the mailing of a check, but true sympathy is the personal concern which demands the giving of one's soul.

One of the greatest casualties of the war in Vietnam is the Great Society... shot down on the battlefield of Vietnam.

The limitation of riots, moral questions aside, is that they cannot win and their participants know it. Hence, rioting is not revolutionary but reactionary because it invites defeat. It involves an emotional catharsis, but it must be followed by a sense of futility.

When you are right you cannot be too radical; when you are wrong, you cannot be too conservative.

Nonviolence means avoiding not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit.

No one gives up his privileges without strong resistance.

The people cry for freedom and the congress attempts to legislate repression.

The first principle of value that we need to rediscover is this: that all reality hinges on moral foundations. In other words, that this is a moral universe, and that there are moral laws of the universe just as abiding as the physical laws.

They say to us that we must be concerned not merely about who murdered them, but about the system, the way of life, the philosophy which produced the murderer.

Prayer is a marvelous and necessary supplement of our feeble efforts, but it is a dangerous substitute.

Violence is all the more regrettable in this period in light of the tremendous nonviolent sacrifices that both Negro and white people together have endured to bring justice to all men.

The Black Power slogan did not spring full grown from the head of some philosophical Zeus. It was born from the wounds of despair and disappointment. It is a cry of daily hurt and persistent pain.

Many Negroes have given up faith in the white majority because "white power" with total control has left them empty-handed. So in reality the call for Black Power is a reaction to the failure of white power.

Violence is not the answer to social conflict whether it is engaged in by white people in Alabama or by Negroes in Los Angeles.

The economic deprivation, racial isolation, inadequate housing, and general despair of thousands of Negroes teaming in Northern and Western ghettoes are the ready seeds which gave birth to tragic expressions of violence.

By acts of commission and omission none of us in this great country has done enough to remove injustice. I therefore humbly suggest that all of us accept our share of responsibility for these past days of anguish.

While I had followed a policy of not endorsing political candidates, I felt that the prospect of Senator Goldwater being President of the United States so threatened the health, morality, and survival of our nation, that I could not in good conscience fail to take a stand against what he represented.

Everybody is on welfare in this country. The problem is that we all to often have socialism for the rich and rugged free enterprise capitalism for the poor.

God has two outstretched arms. One is strong enough to surround us with justice, and one is gentle enough to embrace us with grace.

We did not hesitate to call our movement an army. But it was a special army, with no supplies but its sincerity, no uniform but its determination, no arsenal except its faith, no currency but its conscience.