22 Powerful and Inspiring Martin Luther King Jr. Quotes

God still has a way of wringing good out of evil. History has proven time and time again that unmerited suffering is redemptive.

I submit that an individual who breaks the law that conscience tells him is unjust and willingly accepts the penalty by staying in jail to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the very highest respect for law.

Law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress.

I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.

We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right.

If you lose hope, somehow you lose the vitality that keeps moving, you lose that courage to be, that quality that helps you go on in spite of it all.

Nothing worthwhile is gained without sacrifice.

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.

One's dignity may be assaulted, vandalized, cruelly mocked, but it an never be taken away unless it is surrendered.

Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can't ride you unless your back is bent.

Hate is too big of burden to bear. I have decided to love.

Nonviolence means avoiding not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. You not only refuse to shoot a man, but you refuse to hate him.

Don't allow anybody to make you feel that you're nobody.

A fifth point concerning nonviolent resistance is that it avoids not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. The nonviolent resister not only refuses to shoot his opponent but he also refuses to hate him.

The time is always right to do, what is right.

He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.

Unity has never meant uniformity.

Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.

If you have not discovered something you are willing to die for, then you are not fit to live.

An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts 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.