“We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”
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Freedom
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“Not everybody can be famous but everybody can be great because greatness is determined by service... You only need a heart full of grace and a soul generated by love.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“I became convinced that noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“Take the first step in faith. You don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“As if the weight of such a commitment to life and health of America were not enough, another burden of responsibility was placed upon me in 1964; and I cannot forget that the Nobel Peace Prize was also a commission, a commission to work harder than I had ever worked before for the brotherhood of man. This is a calling that takes me beyond national allegiances.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“After the opposition had failed to negotiate us into a compromise, it turned to subtler means for blocking the protest; namely, to conquer by dividing. False rumors were spread concerning the leaders of the movement. Negro workers were told by their white employers that their leaders were only concerned with making money out of the movement. Others were told that the Negro leaders rode big cars while they walked. During this period the rumor was spread that I had purchased a brand new Cadillac for myself and a Buick station wagon for my wife. Of course none of this was true.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“And in every one of us, there's a war going on. It's a civil war. I don't care who you are, I don't care where you live, there is a civil war going on in your life. And every time you set out to be good, there's something pulling on you, telling you to be evil. It's going on in your life. Every time you set out to love, something keeps pulling on you, trying to get you to hate. Every time you set out to be kind and say nice things about people, something is pulling on you to be jealous and envious and to spread evil gossip about them. There's a civil war going on. There is a schizophrenia, as the psychologists or the psychiatrists would call it, going on within all of us. And there are times that all of us know somehow that there is a Mr. Hyde and a Dr. Jekyll in us...There's a tension at the heart of human nature. And whenever we set out to dream our dreams and to build our temples, we must be honest enough to recognize it.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“We must combine the toughness of the serpent and the softness of the dove, a tough mind and a tender heart.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“Today it is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence; it is either nonviolence or nonexistence.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
