22 Powerful and Inspiring Martin Luther King Jr. Quotes

There comes a time when silence is betrayal.

Everything that is done in the world is done by hope.

There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love.

We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.

You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue.

Hate destroys the hater.

There is no gain without struggle.

It is just as wrong, or even perhaps more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends.

That old law about 'an eye for an eye' leaves everybody blind. The time is always right to do the right thing.

I want to be the white man's brother, not his brother-in-law.

There is such a thing as the freedom of exhaustion. Some people are so worn down by the yoke of oppression that they give up.... The oppressed must never allow the conscience of the oppressor to slumber.... To accept injustice or segregation passively is to say to the oppressor that his actions are morally right.

If a man is called a streetsweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and Earth will pause to say, Here lived a great streetsweeper who did his job well.

The poor never get the job done they are sleepy.

No labor is really menial unless you’re not getting adequate wages.

I will always remember my delight when Mrs. Georgia Gilmore - an unlettered woman of unusual intelligence - told how an operator demanded that she get off the bus after paying her fare and board it again by the back door, and then drove away before she could get there. She turned to Judge Carter and said: "When they count the money, they do not know Negro money from white money."

A man can’t ride your back unless it’s bent.

The majority of the Negroes who took part in the year-long boycott of Montgomery's buses were poor and untutored; but they understood the essence of the Montgomery movement; one elderly woman summed it up for the rest. When asked after several weeks of walking whether she was tired, she answered: "My feet is tired, but my soul is at rest."

Don't hate, it's to big a burden to bear.

God is able to give you the power to endure that which cannot be changed... Why be anxious? Come what may, God is able.

This is the unusual thing about nonviolence -- nobody is defeated, everybody shares in the victory.