Quotes from Martin Luther King, Jr.

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.

True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice that produces beggars needs restructuring.

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

Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.

A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever.

One who condones evils is just as guilty as the one who perpetrates it.

Mankind must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.

Life's most urgent question is: What are you doing for others?

Our nettlesome task is to discover how to organize our strength into compelling power.

It is a tragic mix-up when the United States spends $500,000 for every enemy soldier killed, and only $53 annually on the victims of poverty.

The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral; returning violence with violence only multiplies voilence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.

The hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who remain neutral in times of great moral conflict.

Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation.

Our very survival depends on our ability to stay awake, to adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant and to face the challenge of change.

Seeing is not always believing.

Discrimination is a hellhound that gnaws at Negroes in every waking moment of their lives to remind them that the lie of their inferiority is accepted as truth in the society dominating them.