Quotes About Martin Luther King

When I am commanded to love, I am commanded to restore community, to resist injustice, and to meet the needs of my brothers.

In a 1968 speech given to striking sanitation workers in Memphis, Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., defined power as the ability to achieve purpose and effect change. This is the most accurate and important definition of power that I've ever seen. The definition does not make the nature of power inherently good or bad, which aligns with what I've learned in my work. What makes power dangerous is how it's used.

In 1984, when I was a rookie member of the House, there was a bill introduced to make Martin Luther King's birthday a state holiday. It didn't have a chance. As time passed, though, more and more states adopted the holiday. Finally, after about five years, we passed it and, I think, almost unanimously. As I said, change is slow and hard.

We live in a world where people are fearful of extremism, but Martin Luther King would say he was always trying to keep the flow of love in place. In that sense, he turned the world on its head.

Martin Luther King was an extremist of love.

Martin Luther King and Gandhi were not people who failed in self-respect. They were people of hope and great courage, and their courage was disciplined.

It's much easier to talk about racism when you're able to use mutants as a metaphor. People would much rather talk about Charles Xavier and Magneto than they would about Martin Luther King or Malcolm X.

The other was that all the major civil rights organizations, new as well as old, were committed to the philosophy of non-violence, the doctrine preached by the most conspicuous leader in the Negro movement, Martin Luther King. 'We will soon wear you down by our capacity to suffer,' he told the whites, 'and in winning our freedom we will so appeal to your heart and conscience that we will win you in the process.

Never could I advocate nonviolence in this country and not advocate nonviolence for the whole world.

Hip-hop has done more for race relations than most cultural icons; and I say save Martin Luther King, because his 'I Have A Dream' speech was realized when Obama was elected into office.

Tommy moved on. Lash, your people have been oppressed for hundreds of years. It's time to strike back. Look, you don't have your MBA yet - they haven't completely juiced you of your usefulness yet. Would Martin Luther King back down from this challenge? Malcolm X? James Brown? Don't you have a dream? Don't you feel good, like you knew that you would, now?

I filed a brief as a friend of the court in the U. of Michigan to keep affirmative action at the U. of Michigan, which I attended the law school. And I was one of the original sponsors of making the Martin Luther King birthday a federal holiday.

His headstone said FREE AT LAST, FREE AT LAST But death is a slave's freedom We seek the freedom of free men And the construction of a world Where Martin Luther King could have lived and preached non-violence

I grew up in the 1960s in Memphis, and my father was a member of the American Civil Liberties Union. I was born three years before Martin Luther King was killed, and I think that history of civil action was something that I had in my blood.

When I heard Martin Luther King's speech, 'I Have a Dream,' I reflected on the fact that much of the success of that movement was driven by the unity of the church.

Truth can be a matter of perspective, but I also think there's a truth that exists, that there are laws to the universe the way Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King believed.

I can only speak for myself, but when I was growing up in Memphis - and having the Martin Luther King holiday and the moment of pause on April 4th - he was just a statue to me. I wanted to make him a little bit more real to me as a human being.

I grew up in Ohio, where civil-rights accomplishments had already begun to accelerate before Martin Luther King appeared. In hindsight, we know that many people, black and white, were instrumental in changing the Jim Crow status quo on all levels.

That's part of our policy, is not to be taken seriously, because I think our opposition, whoever they may be, in all their manifest forms, don't know how to handle humor. You know, and we are humorous, we are, what are they, Laurel and Hardy. That's John and Yoko, and we stand a better chance under that guise, because all the serious people, like Martin Luther King, and Kennedy, and Gandhi, got shot.

Martin Luther King, Jr., famously remarked that "justice too long delayed is justice denied." Learning is similar—

Dr. King's flouting of the law does not justify the flouting by others of the law, but it is a terrifying thought that, most likely, the cretin who leveled his rifle on the head of Martin Luther King, may have absorbed the talk, so freely available, about the supremacy of the individual conscience, such talk as Martin Luther King, God rest his soul, had so widely, and so indiscriminately, made.

Maya Angelou was the voice of three generations. Her poetry spanned our journey, chronicled our hearts and documented our struggles as we moved from the orations of Martin Luther King to the presidency of Barack Obama.

What I've always said is that I'm opposed to institutional racism, and I would've, had I've been alive at the time, I think, had the courage to march with Martin Luther King to overturn institutional racism, and I see no place in our society for institutional racism.

I was very much a part of the civil rights era, so, of course, my fantasy was to marry some outstanding black gentleman, a leader - someone like Martin Luther King who was doing something for black people.