Quotes from Martin Luther King, Jr.

God is neither Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian , nor Episcopalian [nor Reformed, either]. God transcends our denominations. If you are to be true witnesses for Christ, you must come to know this....

Rationalization and the incessant search for scapegoats are the psychological cataracts that blind us to our individual and collective sins. But the day has passed for bland euphemisms. He who lives with untruth lives in spiritual slavery.

He explains how all African Americans involved in our own liberation struggle came to embody the dignity of moral conviction and self-sacrifice. Importantly, he explains here how the way of nonviolence heals the oppressed as well as the oppressor.

we will make progress if we freely admit that we have no magic.

Yes we have learned to fly the air like birds, we've learned to swim the seas like fish, and yet we have not learned the simple art of walking the earth as brothers and sisters.

To ignore evil is to become an accomplice to it.

It is not enough for the church to be active in the realm of ideas; it must move out to the arena of social action.

Love yourself, if that means rational, healthy, and moral self-interest. You are commanded to do that. That is the length of life. Love your neighbor as you love yourself. You are commanded to do that. That is the breadth of life. But never forget that there is a first and even greater commandment, Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and all thy soul and all thy mind. This is the height of life. And when you do this you live the complete life.

Why does misery constantly haunt the Negro?

Life's most urgent question is: What are you doing for others?

I suggested then that the prize was not given merely as recognition of past achievement, but also as recognition, a more profound recognition, that the nonviolent way, the American Negro's way, was the answer to the crucial political and moral question of our time: the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to violence and oppression.

The Negro knows he is right. he has not organized for conquest or to gain spoils or to enslave those who have injured him. His goal is not to capture that which belongs to someone else. He merely wants and will have what is honorably his.