Quotes By Martin Luther King Jr.

I submit to you that if a man hasn't discovered something that he will die for, he isn't fit to live.

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.

Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.

Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think.

The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be... The nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.

There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love.

All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.

Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.

Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal.

War is a poor chisel to carve out tomorrow.

The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.

Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.

Law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress.

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made straight and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.

The Negro needs the white man to free him from his fears. The white man needs the Negro to free him from his guilt.

If physical death is the price that I must pay to free my white brothers and sisters from a permanent death of the spirit, then nothing can be more redemptive.