Freedom only comes through persistent revolt, through persistent agitation, through persistently rising up against the system of evil. Martin Luther King, Jr. More Quotes by Martin Luther King, Jr. More Quotes From Martin Luther King, Jr. Every man is somebody because he is a child of God. Martin Luther King, Jr. child-of-god men children We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered. Martin Luther King, Jr. racism rights inspiring 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. Martin Luther King, Jr. religious christian god There are two types of laws: there are just laws and there are unjust laws... What is the difference between the two?...An unjust law is a man-made code that is out of harmony with the moral law. Martin Luther King, Jr. men war peace We cannot walk alone. And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back. Martin Luther King, Jr. i-have-a-dream-speech march walks We must build dikes of courage to hold back the flood of fear. Martin Luther King, Jr. patriotic encouragement fear We are all tied together in a single garment of destiny . . . I can never be what I ought to be until you are allowed to be what you ought to be. Martin Luther King, Jr. destiny gay together This will be the day when we shall bring into full realization the dream of American democracy - a dream yet unfulfilled. A dream of equality of opportunity, of privilege and property widely distributed; a dream of a land where men will not take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few. Martin Luther King, Jr. respect dream opportunity Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love. Martin Luther King, Jr. demand justice love Forgiveness does not mean ignoring what has been done or putting a false label on an evil act. It means, rather, that the evil act no longer remains as a barrier to the relationship. Forgiveness is a catalyst creating the atmosphere necessary for a fresh start and a new beginning. Martin Luther King, Jr. new-beginnings forgiveness mean One of the great tragedies of life is that men seldom bridge the gulf between practice and profession, between doing and saying. Martin Luther King, Jr. bridges practice men Even when the polls are open to all, Negroes have shown themselves too slow to exercise their voting privileges. There must be a concerted effort on the part of Negro leaders to arouse their people from their apathetic indifference.... In the past, apathy was a moral failure. Today, it is a form of moral and political suicide. Martin Luther King, Jr. suicide exercise past The bombs in Vietnam explode at home; they destroy the hopes and possibilities for a decent America. Martin Luther King, Jr. home war peace Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with an its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured. Martin Luther King, Jr. direct-action covered-up medicine 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. Martin Luther King, Jr. teaching education teacher At times, life is hard, as hard as crucible steel. It has its bleak and painful moments. Like the ever flowing water of a river, life has its moments of drought and its moments of flood. Like the ever-changin cycle of the seasons, life has the soothing warmth of the summers and the piercing chill of its winters. But through it all, God walks with us. Never forget that God is able to lift you from the fatigue of despair to the buoyancy of hope, and transform dark and desolate valleys into sunlit paths of inner peace. Martin Luther King, Jr. religious summer dark Hate is too heavy a burden to bear. Martin Luther King, Jr. burden hate bears Music is the best consolation for a despaired man Martin Luther King, Jr. consolation music-is men The recent statement of your executive committee are the sentiments of my own heart and I found myself in full accord when I read its opening lines: "A time comes when silence is betrayal." That time has come for us in relation to Vietnam. Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. Martin Luther King, Jr. betrayal agony night The reason I can't follow the old eye-for-an-eye philosophy is that it ends up leaving everyone blind. Martin Luther King, Jr. leaving eye philosophy
