22 Powerful and Inspiring Martin Luther King Jr. Quotes

Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.

I know that love is ultimately the only answer to mankind's problems.

If we do an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, we will be a blind and toothless nation.

Black Power alone is no more insurance against social injustice than white power.

A man dies when he refuses to stand up for that which is right.

I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and is willing to accept the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.

We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We will meet your physical force with soul force.

Have we not come to such an impasse in the modern world that we must love our enemies - or else? The chain reaction of evil - hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars - must be broken, or else we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.

Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into friend.

God is not interested merely in the freedom of black men, and brown men, and yellow men; God is interested in the freedom of the whole human race.

The sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality.

If you can't fly then run, if you can't run then walk, if you can't walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.

The Negro is the child of two cultures - Africa and America. The problem is that in the search for wholeness all too many Negroes seek to embrace only one side of their natures.

All who call on God in true faith, earnestly from the heart, will certainly be heard, and will receive what they have asked and desired.

Pity may represent little more than the impersonal concern which prompts the mailing of a check, but true sympathy is the personal concern which demands the giving of one's soul.

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.

Seeing is not always believing.

We need not join the mad rush to purchase an earthly fallout shelter. God is our eternal fallout shelter.

We did not hesitate to call our movement an army. But it was a special army, with no supplies but its sincerity, no uniform but its determination, no arsenal except its faith, no currency but its conscience.

In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.