Quotes from Martin Luther King, Jr.
History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
Freedom has always been an expensive thing. History is fit testimony to the fact that freedom is rarely gained without sacrifice and self-denial.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
It will be one of the tragedies of Christian history if future historians record that at the height of the twentieth century the church was one of the greatest bulwarks of white supremacy.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
... the right to defend one's home and one's person when attacked has been guaranteed through the ages by common law.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
If you lose hope, somehow you lose the vitality that keeps moving, you lose that courage to be, that quality that helps you go on in spite of it all. And so today I still have a dream.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
Our eternal message of hope is that dawn will come.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
Make a career of humanity. Commit yourself to the struggle for equal rights.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
My call to the ministry was not a miraculous or supernatural something. On the contrary it was an inner urge calling me to serve humanity.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
If you can't fly then run, if you can't run then walk, if you can't walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
We must learn that passively to accept an unjust system is to cooperate with that system, and thereby to become a participant in its evil.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.