Martin Luther King Jr. Quotes

“Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable. Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.”

“Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”

“History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamour of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.”

“He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.”

“An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.”

“We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was "legal."

“The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character: that is the goal of true education.”

“Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think.”

“Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”

“Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.”

“A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a moulder of consensus.”

“I am not interested in power for power's sake, but I'm interested in power that is moral, that is right and that is good.”

“Whatever your life's work is, do it well. A man should do his job so well that the living, the dead, and the unborn could do it no better.”

“All labour that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.”

“The quality, not the longevity, of one's life is what is important.”

“Almost always, the creative dedicated minority has made the world better.”

“A lie cannot live.”

“Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal.”

“It is not enough to say we must not wage war. It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it.”

“A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defence than on programmes of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.”

“Any religion that professes to be concerned about the souls of men and is not concerned about the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strangle them and the social conditions that cripple them is a spiritually moribund religion.”

“I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.”

“There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love.”

“I've looked over, and I've seen the promised land! I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land.”

“Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”