“One of the greatest paradoxes of the Black Power movement was that it talked unceasingly about not imitating the values of white society, but in advocating violence it was imitating the worst, the most brutal, and the most uncivilized value of American life. American Negroes had not been mass murderers. They had not murdered children in Sunday school, nor had they hung white men on trees bearing strange fruit. They had not been hooded perpetrators of violence, lynching human beings at will and drowning them at whim.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“One has not only a legal, but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“You know my friends, there comes a time when people get tired of being trampled by the iron feet of oppression. There comes a time my friends, when people get tired of being plunged across the abyss of humiliation, where they experience the bleakness of nagging despair. There comes a time when people get tired of being pushed out of the glittering sunlight of life's July and left standing amid the piercing chill of an alpine November. There comes a time.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“You are not only responsible for what you say, but also for what you do not say”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“God is able to give you the power to endure that which cannot be changed... Why be anxious? Come what may, God is able.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on the installment plan.”
―
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.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“Todo hombre debe decidir si caminará a la luz del altruismo creativo o en la oscuridad del egoísmo destructivo. Éste es el juicio. La pregunta más urgente, e ineludible, de la vida es: ¿Qué estás haciendo por los demás?”
―
Martin Luther King Jr