Quotes from Martin Luther King, Jr.

We who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface hidden tension that is already alive

Hate is just as injurious to the hater as it is to the hated. Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Many of our inner conflicts are rooted in hate. This is why the psychiatrists say, Love or perish. Hate is too great a burden to bear.

What is more tragic than to see a person who has risen to the disciplined heights of tough-mindedness but has at the same time sunk to the passionless depths of hard-heartedness?

Hate is too big of burden to bear. I have decided to love.

Christ furnished the spirit and motivation while Gandhi furnished the method.

Babies, we are told, are the latest news from heaven.

The road to freedom is a difficult, hard road. It always makes for temporary setbacks.

The potential beauty of human life is constantly made ugly by man's ever-recurring song of retaliation.

All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality.

Nonviolence] is directed against forces of evil rather than against persons who happen to be doing the evil. It is evil that the nonviolent resister seeks to defeat, not the persons victimized by evil.

The Universe is on the side of Justice

Pada akhirnya bukan kata-kata menyakitkan dari musuh yang selalu kita ingat, tapi diamnya para sahabat yang dulu mendukung kita.

Violence is not only impractical but immoral.

I have a dream, that one day on the red hills of Georgia...

I have consistently preached that nonviolence demands that the means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek.

Everyone has the power for greatness, not for fame but greatness, because greatness is determined by service.

Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right.

Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.

This is the unusual thing about nonviolence -- nobody is defeated, everybody shares in the victory.

I guess one of the great agonies of life is that we are constantly trying to finish that which is unfinishable

Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can't ride you unless your back is bent.

Lamentably, it is a historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to be more immoral than individuals.

I have a dream! To be free at last! Free at last! Free at last. And if a man has nothing to die for, Then his life is worth nothing.

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