Quotes from Martin Luther King, Jr.

Not everybody can be famous but everybody can be great, because greatness is determined by service.

We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. This is no time for apathy or complacency. This is a time for vigorous and positive action.

The day we see the truth and cease to speak is the day we begin to die

Those who love peace must learn to organize as effectively as those who love war.

It may well be that we will have to repent in this generation. Not merely for the vitriolic words and the violent actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence and indifference of the good people who sit around and say, Wait on time.

Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.

Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable... Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.

We may have all come on different ships, but we're in the same boat now.

There is no gain without struggle.

Quietly endure, silently suffer and patiently wait.

It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tired into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one destiny, affects all indirectly.

It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important.

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

A right delayed is a right denied.

True peace is not merely the absence of tension: it is the presence of justice.

Occasionally in life there are those moments of unutterable fulfillment which cannot be completely explained by those symbols called words. Their meanings can only be articulated by the inaudible language of the heart.

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.

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

It does not matter how long you live, but how well you do it.

Morality cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. Judicial decrees may not change the heart, but they can restrain the heartless.

If we do an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, we will be a blind and toothless nation.

When we look at modern man, we have to face the fact...that modern man suffers from a kind of poverty of the spirit, which stands in glaring contrast to his scientific and technological abundance; We've learned to fly the air like birds, we've learned to swim the seas like fish, and yet we haven't learned to walk the Earth as brothers and sisters...

One day we will learn that the heart can never be totally right when the head is totally wrong

Whenever men and women straighten their backs up, they are going somewhere, because a man can't ride your back unless it is bent