Quotes from Martin Luther King, Jr.

God still has a way of wringing good out of evil. History has proven time and time again that unmerited suffering is redemptive.

We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive.He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love

The belief that God will do everything for man is as untenable as the belief that man can do everything for himself. It, too, is based on a lack of faith. We must learn that to expect God to do everything while we do nothing is not faith but superstition.

We must combine the toughness of the serpent and the softness of the dove, a tough mind and a tender heart.

I am tired of seeing people battered and bruised and bloody, injured and jumped on, along the Jericho Roads of life.

It is precisely this collision of immoral power with powerless morality which constitutes the major crisis of our times.

One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.

The Cross is the eternal expression of the length to which God will go to in order to restore broken community.

The limitation of riots, moral questions aside, is that they cannot win and their participants know it. Hence, rioting is not revolutionary but reactionary because it invites defeat. It involves an emotional catharsis, but it must be followed by a sense of futility.

Dark yesterday can be transformed into bright tomorrow.

Everybody is on welfare in this country. The problem is that we all too often have socialism for the rich and rugged free enterprise capitalism for the poor. That's the problem. "The Minister to the Valley," February 23, 1968

The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character - that is the goal of true education.

You can't stop a bird from landing on your head. But you can keep it from building a nest.

As a consequence of combining direct and legal action, far-reaching precedents were established, which served, in turn, to extend the areas of desegregation. Why We Can't Wait, 1963

They say to us that we must be concerned not merely about who murdered them, but about the system, the way of life, the philosophy which produced the murderer.

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

The human heart is like a ship on a stormy sea driven about by winds blowing from all four corners of heaven.

There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love.

Was not Jesus an extremist in love? - "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, pray for them that despitefully use you."

The government can't make people love me, but it can keep them from lynching me.

We are not makers of history. We are made by history.

We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.

We must use time creatively - and forever realize that the time is always hope to do great things.

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit together at the table of brotherhood.