Today marks the birthday of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–68,) American leader of the civil rights movement. He was also known for his dedication to ending segregation peacefully and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.
In 1955, when King was only 26 and serving as a priest in Montgomery, Alabama, a seamstress named Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger on a city bus. King took up her cause and led a year-long Montgomery bus boycott during which his house was bombed and he was assaulted and arrested. In 1957, the Supreme Court ruled that the segregation of buses and public facilities was unconstitutional.
The Montgomery bus boycott put King at the vanguard of the civil rights movement. In 1963, he joined other civil rights leaders at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom where he gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to an audience of 200,000.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. And the Voting Rights Act of 1965 ended voter discrimination in many Southern states.
In 1967, King delivered a speech called “Beyond Vietnam / A Time to Break Silence” denouncing America’s involvement in the Vietnam War and the recruitment of poor and minority soldiers. The next year, King was assassinated at age 39 while standing on the balcony of a Memphis motel. He was preparing to lead a protest rally in solidarity with sanitation workers who were on strike. His death sparked riots in sixty cities.
Since 1986, the third Monday of January is observed annually as a US-federal holiday in his honor.
Inspirational Quotations by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.
—Martin Luther King, Jr. (American Civil Rights Leader)
We are reaching out for the daybreak of freedom and justice and equality.
—Martin Luther King, Jr. (American Civil Rights Leader)
Every genuine expression of love grows out of a consistent and total surrender to God.
—Martin Luther King, Jr. (American Civil Rights Leader)
There is scarcely anything more tragic in human life than a child who is not wanted. That which should be a blessing becomes a curse for parent and child.
—Martin Luther King, Jr. (American Civil Rights Leader)
One of the sure signs of maturity is the ability to rise to the point of self criticism.
—Martin Luther King, Jr. (American Civil Rights Leader)
Non-cooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good.
—Martin Luther King, Jr. (American Civil Rights Leader)
I submit to you that if a man has not discovered something that he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.
—Martin Luther King, Jr. (American Civil Rights Leader)
It is love that will save our world and our civilization, love even for enemies.
—Martin Luther King, Jr. (American Civil Rights Leader)
Violence ends by defeating itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers.
—Martin Luther King, Jr. (American Civil Rights Leader)
The real problem is that through our scientific genius we’ve made of the world a neighborhood, but through our moral and spiritual genius we’ve failed to make of it a brotherhood.
—Martin Luther King, Jr. (American Civil Rights Leader)
It is not enough to know that two and two makes four, but we’ve got to know somehow that it’s right to be honest and just with our brothers. It’s not enough to know all about our philosophical and mathematical disciplines, but we’ve got to know the simple disciplines of being honest and loving and just with all humanity. If we don’t learn it, we will destroy ourselves by the misuse of our own powers.
—Martin Luther King, Jr. (American Civil Rights Leader)
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.
—Martin Luther King, Jr. (American Civil Rights Leader)
Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love. It destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible.
—Martin Luther King, Jr. (American Civil Rights Leader)
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.
—Martin Luther King, Jr. (American Civil Rights Leader)
Love is the supreme unifying principle of life.
—Martin Luther King, Jr. (American Civil Rights Leader)
There is little hope for us until we become tough-minded enough to break loose from the shackles of prejudice, half-truths, and downright ignorance.
—Martin Luther King, Jr. (American Civil Rights Leader)
An individual has not begun to live until he can rise above the narrow horizons of his particular individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity. And this is one of the big problems of life, that so many people never quite get to the point of rising above self. And so they end up the tragic victims of self-centeredness. They end up the victims of distorted and disrupted personality.
—Martin Luther King, Jr. (American Civil Rights Leader)
The thing that we need in the world today is a group of men and women who will stand up for right and to be opposed to wrong, wherever it is. A group of people who have come to see that some things are wrong, whether they’re never caught up with. And some things are right, whether nobody sees you doing them or not.
—Martin Luther King, Jr. (American Civil Rights Leader)
Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic.
—Martin Luther King, Jr. (American Civil Rights Leader)
True peace is not merely the absence of tension: it is the presence of justice.
—Martin Luther King, Jr. (American Civil Rights Leader)
Nonviolent resistance is not aimed against oppressors, but against oppression.
—Martin Luther King, Jr. (American Civil Rights Leader)
It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence in this world; it’s nonviolence or nonexistence.
—Martin Luther King, Jr. (American Civil Rights Leader)
The best way to solve any problem is to remove the cause.
—Martin Luther King, Jr. (American Civil Rights Leader)
The time is always right to do what’s right.
—Martin Luther King, Jr. (American Civil Rights Leader)
When people are self-centered, they are self-centered because they are seeking attention, they want to be admired and this is the way they set out to do it. But in the process, because of their self-centeredness, they are not admired; they are mawkish and people don’t want to be bothered with them. And so the very thing they seek, they never get. And they end up frustrated and unhappy and disillusioned.
—Martin Luther King, Jr. (American Civil Rights Leader)
The richer we have become materially, the poorer we have become morally and spiritually. We have learned to fly the air like birds and swim the sea like fish, but we have not learned the simple art of living together as brothers.
—Martin Luther King, Jr. (American Civil Rights Leader)
As long as the mind is enslaved, the body can never be free.
—Martin Luther King, Jr. (American Civil Rights Leader)
No nation can rise to its full moral maturity so long as it subjects a segment of its citizenry on the basis of race or color.
—Martin Luther King, Jr. (American Civil Rights Leader)
Justice is love correcting that which revolts against love.
—Martin Luther King, Jr. (American Civil Rights Leader)
Ultimately a great nation is a compassionate nation. No individual or nation can be great if it does not have a concern for “the least of these”.
—Martin Luther King, Jr. (American Civil Rights Leader)
We must massively assert our dignity and worth. We must stand up amidst a system that still oppresses us and develop an unassailable and majestic sense of values.
—Martin Luther King, Jr. (American Civil Rights Leader)
Keep moving. Let nothing slow you up. Move on with dignity and honor and respectability.
—Martin Luther King, Jr. (American Civil Rights Leader)
Life at its best is a creative synthesis of opposites in fruitful harmony.
—Martin Luther King, Jr. (American Civil Rights Leader)
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. They are complementary.
—Martin Luther King, Jr. (American Civil Rights Leader)
Find your sense of importance in something outside of the self. And you are then able to live because you have given your life to something outside and something that is meaningful, objectified. You rise above this self-absorption to something outside. This is the way to go through life with a balance, with the proper perspective because you’ve given yourself to something greater than self. Sometimes it’s friends, sometimes it’s family, sometimes it’s a great cause, it’s a great loyalty, but give yourself to that something and life becomes meaningful.
—Martin Luther King, Jr. (American Civil Rights Leader)
Life has its beginning and its maturity comes into being when an individual rises above self to something greater.
—Martin Luther King, Jr. (American Civil Rights Leader)
Men often hate each other because they fear each other; they fear each other because they don’t know each other; they don’t know each other because they cannot communicate; they cannot communicate because they are separated.
—Martin Luther King, Jr. (American Civil Rights Leader)
The basic thing about a man is not his specific but his fundamentum.
—Martin Luther King, Jr. (American Civil Rights Leader)
Ultimately a genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus, but a molder of consensus.
—Martin Luther King, Jr. (American Civil Rights Leader)
On some positions, Cowardice asks the question, “Is it safe?” Expediency asks the question, “Is it politic?” And Vanity comes along and asks the question, “Is it popular?” But Conscience asks the question “Is it right?” And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must do it because Conscience tells him it is right. I believe today that there is a need for all people of good will to come together with a massive act of conscience and say in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “We ain’t goin’ study war no more.” This is the challenge facing modern man.
—Martin Luther King, Jr. (American Civil Rights Leader)
Discover the element of good in your enemy. And as you seek to hate him, find the center of goodness and place your attention there and you will take a new attitude.
—Martin Luther King, Jr. (American Civil Rights Leader)
Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.
—Martin Luther King, Jr. (American Civil Rights Leader)
Some things are right and some things are wrong, no matter if everybody is doing the contrary. Some things in this universe are absolute. The God of the universe has made it so. And so long as we adopt this relative attitude toward right and wrong, we’re revolting against the very laws of God himself.
—Martin Luther King, Jr. (American Civil Rights Leader)
If we are to go forward, we must go back and rediscover these precious values: that all reality hinges on moral foundations and that all reality has spiritual control.
—Martin Luther King, Jr. (American Civil Rights Leader)
When people get caught up with that which is right and they are willing to sacrifice for it, there is no stopping point short of victory.
—Martin Luther King, Jr. (American Civil Rights Leader)
In every age and every generation, men have envisioned a promised land.
—Martin Luther King, Jr. (American Civil Rights Leader)
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.
—Martin Luther King, Jr. (American Civil Rights Leader)
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, Jr. (American Civil Rights Leader)