22 Powerful and Inspiring Martin Luther King Jr. Quotes

If a man doesn't have a job or an income, he has neither life nor liberty nor the possibility for the pursuit of happiness. He merely exists.

Hatred and bitterness can never cure the disease of fear; only love can do that. Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illumines it.

The conclusion that there is an existential moment in your life when you must decide to speak for yourself; nobody else can speak for you.

The saving of our world from pending doom will come, not through the complacent adjustment of the conforming majority, but through the creative maladjustment of a nonconforming minority.

You will change your mind; You will change your looks; You will change your smile,laugh, and ways but no matter what you change, you will always be you

We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.

A man who does not have something for which he is willing to die is not fit to live.

Justice too long delayed is justice denied.

One cannot worship the false god of nationalism and the God of Christianity at the same time.

We who in engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive.

True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.

There is nothing more tragic than to find an individual bogged down in the length of life, devoid of breadth.

Without love, there is no reason to know anyone, for love will in the end connect us to our neighbors, our children and our hearts.

Worship at its best is a social experience with people of all levels of life coming together to realize their oneness and unity under God. Whenever the church, consciously or unconsciously caters to one class it loses the spiritual force of the whosoever will, let him come, doctrine and is in danger of becoming a little more than a social club with a thin veneer of religiosity.

When the Negro was completely an underdog, he needed white spokesmen. Liberals played their parts in this period exceedingly well.... But now that the Negro has rejected his role as an underdog, he has become more assertive in his search for identity and group solidarity; he wants to speak for himself.

All progress is precarious, and the solution of one problem brings us face to face with another problem.

We must either learn to live together as brothers, or we are going to die together as fools.

A right delayed is a right denied.

We were all involved in the death of John Kennedy. We tolerated hate; we tolerated the sick stimulation of violence in all walks of life; and we tolerated the differential application of law, which said that a man's life was sacred only if we agreed with his views.

Cowardice is submissive surrender to circumstances.