Quotes About Martin Luther King Jr.

Non-violence is not sterile passivity, but a powerful moral force which makes for social transformation.

I am convinced that even violent temperaments can be channeled through nonviolent discipline, if they can act constructively and express through an effective channel their very legitimate anger.

The question was not whether one should use his gun when his home was attacked, but whether it was tactically wise to use a gun while participating in an organized demonstration. If they lowered the banner of nonviolence, I said, Mississippi injustice would not be exposed and the moral issues would be obscured.

Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity

Today in all too many Northern communities a sort of quasi-liberalism prevails, so bent on seeing all sides that it fails to become dedicated to any side. It is so objectively analytical that it is not subjectively committed.

Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral. I am not unmindful of the fact that violence often brings about momentary results. Nations have frequently won their independence in battle. But in spite of temporary victories, violence never brings permanent peace.

In addition to the absence of coordination and sufficiency, the programs of the past all have another common failing—they are indirect. Each seeks to solve poverty by first solving something else. I am now convinced that the simplest approach will prove to be the most effective—the solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a now widely discussed measure: the guaranteed income.

Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

The solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a now widely discussed measure: the guaranteed income.

From the Introduction by Cornell West) For King, dissent did not mean disloyalty—in fact, dissent was a high form of patriotism. When he said that the US government was "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today," he was not trashing America. He was telling the painful truth about a country he loved. King was never anti-American; he was always anti-injustice in America and anywhere else.

Whatever measure of influence I had as a result of the importance which the world attaches to the Nobel Peace Prize would have to be used to bring the philosophy of nonviolence to all the world's people who grapple with the age-old problem of racial injustice.

My study of Gandhi convinced me that true pacifism is not nonresistance to evil, but nonviolent resistance to evil. Between the two positions, there is a world of difference.

I said to myself, the victory is already won, no matter how long we struggle to attain the three points of the resolution. It is a victory infinitely larger than the bus situation. The real victory was in the mass meeting, where thousands of black people stood revealed with a new sense of dignity and destiny.

History has shown that, like a virulent disease germ, racism can grow and destroy nations.

But they are balanced at the other end of the pole by the unregenerate segregationists who have declared that democracy is not worth having if it involves equality. The segregationist goal is the total reversal of all reforms, with reestablishment of naked oppression and if need be a native form of fascism.

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

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

Pigmentation was a quick and convenient way of judging a person. One of us, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., once proposed we instead judge people by the content of their character. He was shot.

The wisdom of Martin Luther King Jr. had been long forgotten. "The church must be reminded that it is not to be the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state. It must be the guide and the critic of the state—never its tool," King said. "As long as the church is a tool of the state it will be unable to provide even a modicum of bread for men at midnight.

When I was teaching in the 1960s in Boston, there was a great deal of hope in the air. Martin Luther King Jr. was alive, Malcolm X was alive great, great leaders were emerging from the southern freedom movement.

What shaped my politics regarding war and peace was Martin Luther King Jr., the most extraordinary person that I ever heard. And when he began to talk about the issues of war and peace with such eloquence and such passion, I was drawn to that like a magnet.

One day after laying a wreath at the tomb of Martin Luther King Jr., President Bush appoints a federal judge who has built his career around dismantling Dr. King's legacy.

I recalled a sermon by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., called "The Drum Major Instinct." In it, he talks about how, deep down, we all want to be first, celebrated for our greatness; we all want "to lead the parade." He goes on to point out that such selfish impulses can be reconciled by aligning that quest for greatness with more selfless aims. You can strive to be first in service, first in love.

Martin Luther King Jr. stated, "If we are to go forward, we must go back and rediscover those precious values that all reality hinges