“What is more tragic than to see a person who has risen to the disciplined heights of tough-mindedness but has at the same time sunk to the passionless depths of hard-heartedness?”
―
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
“Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love. It destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible. It leaves society in monologue rather than dialogue. Violence ends up defeating itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“The non-violent resistor not only avoids external, physical violence, but he avoids internal violence of spirit. He not only refuses to shoot his opponent, but he refuses to hate him. And he stands with understanding, goodwill at all times.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“We must learn that passively to accept an unjust system is to cooperate with that system, and thereby to become a participant in its evil.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“I submit to you that if a man has not discovered something that he will die for, he isn't fit to live.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“They have acted in the faith that right defeated is stronger than evil triumphant.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“Only through an inner spiritual transformation do we gain the strength to fight vigorously the evils of the world in a humble and loving spirit.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“Time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively. More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to work to be co-workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
