Quotes from Martin Luther King, Jr.

Our nation may be able to put a man on the moon in a few years, but it still cannot find out how to put a Negro in the legislature of Mississippi or put an unemployed worker back on the job. I have nothing against exploration of the moon or the planets, but if we can reach so high that we can challenge the mysteries and dangers of space, surely we can challenge the poverty and discrimination under our feet.

But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough can you see the stars

All of this tells us that the white backlash is nothing new. White America has been backlashing on the fundamental God-given and human rights of Negro Americans for more than three hundred years. With all of her dazzling achievements and stupendous material strides, America has maintained its strange ambivalence on the question of racial justice.

I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.

The Negro became, in his own estimation, the equal of any man. In the summer of 1963, the Negroes of America wrote an emancipation proclamation to themselves. They shook off three hundred years of psychological slavery and said: "We can make ourselves free." The old order ends, no matter what Bastilles remain, when the enslaved, within themselves, bury the psychology of servitude. This is what happened last year in the unseen chambers of millions of minds.

The hard truth is that neither Negro nor white has yet done enough to expect the dawn of a new day. While much has been done, it has been accomplished by too few and on a scale too limited for the breadth of the goal. Freedom is not won by a passive acceptance of suffering. Freedom is won by a struggle against suffering. By this measure, Negroes have not yet paid the full price for freedom. And whites have not yet faced the full cost of justice.

I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action.

Se não puder voar, corra. Se não puder correr, ande. Se não puder andar, rasteje; mas continue em frente de qualquer jeito.

He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it. When oppressed people willingly accept their oppression they only serve to give the oppressor a convenient justification for his acts.

Man-made laws assure justice, but a higher law produces love. No code of conduct ever persuaded a father to love his children or a husband to show affection to his wife. The law court may force him to provide bread for the family, but it cannot make him provide the bread of love.

determination, enough courage and faith to meet the difficulties as they developed. When I hear, "People aren't ready," that's like telling a person who is trying

If America would come to herself and return to her true home, "one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all," she would give the democratic creed a new authentic ring, enkindle the imagination of mankind and fire the souls of men. If she fails, she will be victimized with the ultimate social psychosis that can lead only to national suicide.

Bóng t?i không th? xua tan bóng t?i, ch? ánh sáng má»›i làm ???c Ä'i?u Ä'ó. H?n thù không th? xóa b? h?n thù, ch? tình yêu má»›i làm ???c Ä'i?u Ä'ó mà thôi.

My parents would always tell me that I should not hate the white man, but that it was my duty as a Christian to love him. The question arose in my mind: How could I love a race of people who hated me and who had been responsible for breaking me up with one of my best childhood friends? This was a great question in my mind for a number of years.

And when you discover what you're going to be in life, set out to do it as if God Almighty called you at this particular moment in history to do it. And

Anyone who starts out with the conviction that the road to racial justice is only one lane wide will inevitably create a traffic jam and make the journey infinitely longer.

Khi ai Ä'ó nói l?i khó nghe hay ??i xá»­ t? vá»›i b?n, ??ng c?m th?y b? xúc ph?m. Nó không nói lên Ä'i?u gì v? b?n nhÆ°ng l?i nói nhi?u v? h?.

to swim, "Don't jump in that water until you learn how to swim." When actually you will never learn how to swim until you get in the water. People have to have an opportunity to develop themselves and govern

I came to see that no one gives up his privileges without strong resistance. I saw further that the underlying purpose of segregation was to oppress and exploit the segregated, not simply to keep them apart. Justice and equality I saw, would never come while segregation remained, because the basic purpose of segragation was to perpetuate injustice and inequality.

Christianity has always insisted that the cross we bear precedes the crown we wear. To be a Christian one must take up his cross, with all its difficulties and agonizing and tension-packed content, and carry it until that very cross leaves its mark upon us and redeems us to that more excellent way which comes only through suffering.

As if the weight of such a commitment to life and health of America were not enough, another burden of responsibility was placed upon me in 1964; and I cannot forget that the Nobel Peace Prize was also a commission, a commission to work harder than I had ever worked before for the brotherhood of man. This is a calling that takes me beyond national allegiances.

In deep disappointment I have wept over the laxity of the church. But be assured that my tears have been tears of love. There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love.

Whatever measure of influence I had as a result of the importance which the world attaches to the Nobel Peace Prize would have to be used to bring the philosophy of nonviolence to all the world's people who grapple with the age-old problem of racial injustice.

Above all, I see the preaching ministry as a dual process. On the one hand I must attempt to change the soul of individuals so that their societies may be changed. On the other I must attempt to change the societies so that the individual soul will have a change. Therefore, I must be concerned about unemployment, slums, and economic insecurity. I am a profound advocate of the social gospel.