“Morality cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. Judicial decrees may not change the heart, but they can restrain the heartless.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“We are prone to judge success by the index of our salaries or the size of our automobiles rather than by the quality of our service and relationship to mankind.”
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Martin Luther King Jr
“It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tired into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one destiny, affects all indirectly.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“The human heart is like a ship on a stormy sea driven about by winds blowing from all four corners of heaven.”
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Martin Luther King Jr
“We must come to see that the end we seek is a society at peace with itself, a society that can live with its conscience.”
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Martin Luther King Jr
“Commit yourself to the noble struggle for equal rights. You will make a greater person of yourself.”
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Martin Luther King Jr
“Violence never really deals with the basic evil of the situation. Violence may murder the murderer, but it doesn’t murder murder. Violence may murder the liar, but it doesn’t murder lie; it doesn’t establish truth. Violence may even murder the dishonest man, but it doesn’t murder dishonesty. Violence may go to the point of murdering the hater, but it doesn’t murder hate. It may increase hate. It is always a descending spiral leading nowhere. This is the ultimate weakness of violence: It multiplies evil and violence in the universe. It doesn’t solve any problems.”
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Martin Luther King Jr
“Three hundred years of humiliation, abuse and deprivation cannot be expected to find voice in a whisper.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“For you will never be what you ought to be until they [your fellow humans] are what they ought to be.”
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Martin Luther King Jr
“Science investigates, religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge which is power, religion gives man wisdom which is control. Science deals mainly with facts, religion deals with values. The two are not rivals. They are complementary. Science keeps religion from sinking into the valley of crippling irrationalism and paralysing obscurantism. Religion prevents science from falling into the marsh of obsolete materialism and moral nihilism.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“My call to the ministry was not a miraculous or supernatural something. On the contrary it was an inner urge calling me to serve humanity.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“Through our scientific genius, we have made of this world a neighborhood; now through our moral and spiritual development, we must make of it a brotherhood. In a real sense, we must all learn to live together as brothers or we will all perish together as fools. We must come to see that no individual can live alone. We must all live together; we must all be concerned about each other.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“The means by which we live have outdistanced the ends for which we live. Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.”
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Martin Luther King Jr
“All too many others have been more cautious than courageous and have remained silent behind the anesthetizing security of stained-glass windows”
―
Martin Luther King Jr