In His Own Words: 20 Quotes from Martin Luther King Jr.
• “Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon. Indeed, it is a weapon unique in history, which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it.”
• “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.”
• “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.”
• “Almost always, the creative dedicated minority has made the world better.”
• “Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.”
• “When you are right you cannot be too radical; when you are wrong, you cannot be too conservative.”
• “Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.”
• “It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that’s pretty important.”
• “All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.”
• “It is incontestable and deplorable that Negroes have committed crimes; but they are derivative crimes. They are born of the greater crimes of white society.”
• “We must build dikes of courage to hold back the flood of fear.”
• “The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was: ‘If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?’ But… the good Samaritan reversed the question: ‘If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?”
• “If I wish to compose or write or pray or perch well, I must be angry. Then all the blood in my veins is stirred, and my understanding is sharpened.”
• “A right delayed is a right denied.”
• “Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability but comes through continuous struggle. And so, we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can’t ride you unless your back is bent.”
• “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.”
• “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.”
• “Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal.”
• “If a man has not discovered something that he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.
