Quotes from Martin Luther King, Jr.

Difficult and painful as it is, we must walk on in the days ahead with an audacious faith in the future.

Faith can give us courage to face the uncertainties of the future.

Once you become dedicated to a cause, personal security is not the goal. What will happen to you personally does not matter. My cause, my race, is worth dying for.

I say to you that our goal is freedom, and I believe we are going to get there because however much she strays away from it, the goal of America is freedom.

Have we not come to such an impasse in the modern world that we must love our enemies - or else? The chain reaction of evil - hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars - must be broken, or else we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation

Everybody can be great. Because anybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You don't have to know about Plato and Aristotle... (or) Einstein's Theory of Relativity ... (or) the Second Theory of Thermodynamics in physics to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love

Without love, benevolence becomes egotism.

Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic.

Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.

At the center of nonviolence stands the principle of love.

You don't have to see the whole staircase. Just take the first step.

Even if it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, go on out and sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures; sweep streets like Handel and Beethoven composed music; sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry; sweep streets so well that all the host of heaven and earth will have to pause and say, "Here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well."