22 Powerful and Inspiring Martin Luther King Jr. Quotes

It does not matter how long you live, but how well you do it.

Not everybody can be famous but everybody can be great, because greatness is determined by service.

As television beamed the image of this extraordinary gathering across the border oceans, everyone who believed in man's capacity to better himself had a moment of inspiration and confidence in the future of the human race.

The end of life is not to be happy, nor to achieve pleasure and avoid pain, but to do the will of God, come what may.

What affects one in a major way, affects all in a minor way.

For you will never be what you ought to be until your fellow humans are what they ought to be.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon. which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it. It is a sword that heals.

The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

Those who love peace must learn to organize as effectively as those who love war.

The hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who remain neutral in times of great moral conflict.

The hope of a secure and livable world lies with disciplined nonconformists who are dedicated to justice, peace and brotherhood.

We may have all come on different ships, but we're in the same boat now.

A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on the installment plan.

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.

When you first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are), and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro... when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness" - then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait.

A social movement that only moves people is merely a revolt. A movement that changes both people and institutions is a revolution.

The belief that God will do everything for man is as untenable as the belief that man can do everything for himself. It, too, is based on a lack of faith. We must learn that to expect God to do everything while we do nothing is not faith but superstition.

The Negro needs the white man to free him from his fears. The white man needs the Negro to free him from his guilt.

The moral arc of the universe bends at the elbow of justice.