Quotes from Martin Luther King, Jr.

We are called upon to help the discouraged beggars in life's marketplace. But one day we must come to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.

Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral. I am not unmindful of the fact that violence often brings about momentary results. Nations have frequently won their independence in battle. But in spite of temporary victories, violence never brings permanent peace.

I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality... I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

There comes a time when a moral man can't obey a law which his conscience tells him is unjust.

There is such a thing as being too late. This is no time for apathy or complacency. This is a time for vigorous and positive action.

Time has been used destructively by people of ill will much more than it has been used constructively by those of good will.

Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity.

There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair.

It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important.

There comes a time when people get tired of being trampled over by the iron feet of oppression.

There comes a time when people get tired of being pushed out of the glittering sunlight of life's July and left standing amid the piercing chill of an alpine November.

Capitalism does not permit an even flow of economic resources. With this system, a small privileged few are rich beyond conscience, and almost all others are doomed to be poor at some level. That's the way the system works. And since we know that the system will not change the rules, we are going to have to change the system.

Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.

Cowardice asks the question, is it safe? Expediency asks the question, is it politic? Vanity 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 one must take it because it is right.

Though we live in the colony of time, we are ultimately responsible to the empire of eternity.

The only time people do not like praise is when too much of it is going toward someone else.

Procrastinatio n is still the thief of time.

Is is always time to do the right thing.

It's not how long a man lives, but how well he uses the time allotted him.

Will we march only to the music of time, or will we, risking criticism and abuse, march to the soul-saving music of eternity?

Worship at its best is a social experience with people of all levels of life coming together to realize their oneness and unity under God. Whenever the church, consciously or unconsciously caters to one class it loses the spiritual force of the whosoever will, let him come, doctrine and is in danger of becoming a little more than a social club with a thin veneer of religiosity.

Ce qui m'effraie, ce n'est pas l'oppression des méchants; c'est l'indifférence des bons.

If you will protest courageously, and yet with dignity and Christian love, when the history books are written in future generations, the historians will have to pause and say, There lived a great people-a black people-who injected new meaning and dignity into the veins of civilization.