“We have flown the air like birds and swum the sea like fishes, but have yet to learn the simple act of walking the earth like brothers.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“All progress is precarious, and the solution of one problem brings us face to face with another problem.”
―
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
“The amazing aftermath of Birmingham, the sweeping Negro Revolution, revealed to people all over the land that there are no outsiders in all these fifty states of America. When a police dog buried his fangs in the ankle of a small child in Birmingham, he buried his fangs in the ankle of every American. The bell of man's inhumanity to man does not toll for any one man. It tolls for you, for me, for all of us.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“As I went through this period one night I picked up an article entitled "The Children of Vietnam," and I read it. And after reading that article, I said to myself, "Never again will I be silent on an issue that is destroying the soul of our nation and destroying thousands and thousands of little children in Vietnam." I came to the conclusion that there is an existential moment in your life when you must decide to speak for yourself; nobody else can speak for you.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“When you cut facilities, slash jobs, abuse power, discriminate, drive people into deeper poverty and shoot people dead whilst refusing to provide answers or justice, the people will rise up and express their anger and frustration if you refuse to hear their cries. A riot is the language of the unheard.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be taken by the oppressed.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“I guess one of the great agonies of life is that we are constantly trying to finish that which is unfinishable”
―
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
