Martin Luther King Jr was born on January 15, 1929. He fought fiercely to provide equal rights to all citizens in America. In particular, he stressed the need to end discrimination of blacks and whites in the country and empower Negro people of African descent. He was rich in prodigious talent since childhood. He started higher education at just 15 years of age. He Started his first movement in 1955.
At that time, separate seats were reserved for black and white people for buses and trains in America. To protest against this, he launched his first movement – Boycott of Public Buses. In 1963, he made his famous speech during the Civil Rights Act which became known as “I Have a Dream”.
On April 4, 1968, a white man named James Earl Ray, unhappy with his actions, shot him. And he died.
Let us read some of his precious thoughts that inspire us to stand with courage in every mode of life.
Martin Luther King Quotes About Success
“If you can’t fly, then run. if you can’t run, then walk. If you can’t walk, then crawl, but by all means, keep moving.
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.
Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding.
Give us the ballot, and we will transform the salient misdeeds of bloodthirsty mobs into the calculated good deeds of orderly citizens.
“If any earthly institution or custom conflicts with God’s will, it is your Christian duty to oppose it. You must never allow the transitory, evanescent demands of man-made institutions to take precedence over the eternal demands of the Almighty God.
A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.
The time is always right to do what is right.
Only when it is dark enough can you see the stars
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.
We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right.
Martin Luther King Quotes on love
I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.
We must discover the power of love, the power, the redemptive power of love. And when we discover that we will be able to make of this old world a new world. We will be able to make men better. Love is the only way.
Martin Luther King had a dream, but he also worked hard to make his dream come true, you have to do the same.
Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend.
Love is the most durable power in the world.
There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love.
I have decided to stick with love, hate is too great a burden to bear.”
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.
He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love.
It is not enough to say we must not wage war. It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it.
Martin Luther King quotes about Racism
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.
We must learn to live together as brothers or we will perish together as fools.
The whole world must see that Israel must exist and has the right to exist, and is one of the great outposts of democracy in the world.
Almost always, the creative dedicated minority has made the world better.
People fail to get along because they fear each other; they fear each other because they don’t know each other because they don’t know each other; they don’t know each other because they have not communicated with each other.
It is not possible to be in favor of justice for some people and not be in favor of justice for all people.
Non-violence is a powerful and just weapon. Which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it. It is a sword that heals.
We are not makers of history. We are made by history.
Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral. I am not unmindful of the fact that violence often brings about momentary results. Nations have frequently won their independence in battle. But in spite of temporary victories, violence never brings permanent peace.
I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality… I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.
Martin Luther King Quotes I Have a Dream
Every genuine expression of love grows out of a consistent and total surrender to God.
I still have a dream, a dream deeply rooted in the American dream – one day this nation will rise up and live up to its creed, ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.’”
Science investigates; religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge, which is power; religion gives man wisdom, which is control. Science deals mainly with facts; religion deals mainly with values. The two are not rivals.
There is nothing more tragic than to find an individual bogged down in the length of life, devoid of breadth.
We may have all come on different ships, but we’re in the same boat now.
An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.
Every man lives in two realms: the internal and the external. The internal is that realm of spiritual ends expressed in art, literature, morals, and religion. The external is that complex of devices, techniques, mechanisms, and instrumentalities by means of which we live.
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.
The quality, not the longevity, of one’s life is what is important.
The past is prophetic in that it asserts loudly that wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows
Nonviolence is absolute commitment to the way of love. Love is not emotional bash; it is not empty sentimentalism. It is the active outpouring of one’s whole being into the being of another.
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.
All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.
Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.
We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right.
The quality, not the longevity, of one’s life is what is important
The limitation of riots, moral questions aside, is that they cannot win and their participants know it. Hence, rioting is not revolutionary but reactionary because it invites defeat. It involves an emotional catharsis, but it must be followed by a sense of futility.
Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation.
Property is intended to serve life, and no matter how much we surround it with rights and respect, it has no personal being. It is part of the earth man walks on. It is not man.
We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.
It is not enough to say we must not wage war. It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it.
“A lie cannot live.
Martin Luther King quotes on Education
Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.
Nothing is all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.
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.
I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality, and freedom for their spirits.
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.
Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
Forgiveness is not an occasional act; it is a constant attitude.
Ten thousand fools proclaim themselves into obscurity, while one wise man forgets himself into immortality.
That old law about ‘an eye for an eye’ leaves everybody blind. The time is always right to do the right thing.
Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle
We are prone to judge success by the index of our salaries or the size of our automobiles rather than by the quality of our service and relationship to mankind.
Not everybody can be famous but everybody can be great because greatness is determined by service… You only need a heart full of grace and a soul generated by love.
The soft-minded man always fears change. He feels security in the status quo, and he has an almost morbid fear of the new. For him, the greatest pain is the pain of a new idea.
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.
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.
Almost always, the creative dedicated minority has made the world better.
Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle.
When you are right you cannot be too radical; when you are wrong, you cannot be too conservative.
If I cannot do great things, I can do small things in a great way.
Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.
We cannot walk alone.
Lightning makes no sound until it strikes.
Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.
Martin Luther King jr Quotes on Courage
Courage is an inner resolution to go forward despite obstacles; Cowardice is submissive surrender to circumstances.
Courage breeds creativity; Cowardice represses fear and is mastered by it.
We must build dikes of courage to hold back the flood of fear.”
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.
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.
Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.
Everybody can be great … because anybody can serve.
Let no man pull you low enough to hate him.
Use me, God. Show me how to take who I am, who I want to be, and what I can do, and use it for a purpose greater than myself.
When we look at modern man, we have to face the fact that modern man suffers from a kind of poverty of spirit.
There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe nor politic nor popular, but he must take it because his conscience tells him it is right.
A man who won’t die for something is not fit to live.
We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.
Those who are not looking for happiness are the most likely to find it, because those who are searching forget that the surest way to be happy is to seek happiness for others.
Never succumb to the temptation of bitterness.
No person has the right to rain on your dreams
Everything that we see is a shadow cast by that which we do not see.
We must concentrate not merely on the negative expulsion of war but the positive affirmation of peace.
The art of acceptance is the art of making someone who has just done you a small favor wish that he might have done you a greater one.
No one really knows why they are alive until they know what they’d die for
You will change your mind; You will change your looks; You will change your smile, laugh, and ways but no matter what you change, you will always be you.
A riot is the language of the unheard.
Never, never be afraid to do what’s right, especially if the well-being of a person or animal is at stake. Society’s punishments are small compared to the wounds we inflict on our soul when we look the other way.
If I cannot do great things, I can do small things in a great way.