“If there is to be peace on earth and good will toward men, we must finally believe in the ultimate morality of the universe, and believe that all reality hinges on moral foundations.”
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Martin Luther King Jr
“Economic insecurity strangles the physical and cultural growth of its victims. Not only are millions deprived of formal education and proper health facilities but our most fundamental social unit—the family—is tortured, corrupted, and weakened by economic insufficiency. When a Negro man is inadequately paid, his wife must work to provide the simple necessities for the children. When a mother has to work she does violence to motherhood by depriving her children of her loving guidance and protection; often they are poorly cared for by others or by none—left to roam the streets unsupervised. It is not the Negro alone who is wronged by a disrupted society; many white families are in similar straits. The Negro mother leaves home to care for—and be a substitute mother for—white children, while the white mother works. In this strange irony lies the promise of future correction.”
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Martin Luther King Jr
“The question is not if we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. The nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.”
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Martin Luther King Jr
“There are two types of laws, those that are just and those that are unjust. A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law...Any law that uplifts the human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality.”
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Martin Luther King Jr
“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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“One day we will learn that the heart can never be totally right if the head is totally wrong. Only through the bringing together of head and heart—intelligence and goodness—shall man rise to a fulfillment of his true nature.”
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Martin Luther King Jr
“The end of life is not to be happy, nor to achieve pleasure and avoid pain, but to do the will of God, come what may.”
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Martin Luther King Jr
“it is just as wrong, or even perhaps more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends.”
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Martin Luther King Jr
There comes a time when one must take the position that is neither safe nor politic nor popular, but he must do it because conscience tells him it is right.”
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Martin Luther King Jr
“A man who does not have something for which he is willing to die is not fit to live.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
