Please take time to read each and every one of these quotes from Dr. King.
Think about how they apply today?
How they have bettered your life.
Share those that are most close to you and why.
“Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend.”
“That old law about ‘an eye for an eye’ leaves everybody blind. The time is always right to do what is right.”
“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”
“If you can’t fly, then run, if you can’t walk run, then walk, if you can’t walk, then crawl, but by all means keep moving.”
“Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.”
“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”
“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”
“We may have all come on different ships, but we’re in the same boat now.”
“We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.”
“Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.”
“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.”
“Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?”
“You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.”
“Only in the darkness can you see the stars.”
“We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.”
“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
“We must use time creatively.”
“Those who are not looking for happiness are the most likely to find it, because those who are searching forget that the surest way to be happy is to seek happiness for others.”
“We must substitute courage for caution.”
“The time is always right to do what is right.”
“Free at last, Free at last, Thank God almighty we are free at last.”
“I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear”
“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.”
“Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”
“Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.”
“Almost always, the creative dedicated minority has made the world better.”
“Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.”
“It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that’s pretty important.”
“All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.”
"It is incontestable and deplorable that Negroes have committed crimes; but they are derivative crimes. They are born of the greater crimes of white society.”
“The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was: ‘If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?’ But… the Good Samaritan reversed the question: ‘If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?”
“A right delayed is a right denied.”
“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”
“The Negro needs the white man to free him from his fears. The white man needs the Negro to free him from his guilt.”
“Wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.”
“If physical death is the price that I must pay to free my white brothers and sisters from a permanent death of the spirit, then nothing can be more redemptive.”
“A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.”
“It is not enough to say we must not wage war. It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it.”
“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.”
“An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.”
“Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal.”
“If a man has not discovered something that he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.”
“A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on the installment plan.”
“The hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who remain neutral in times of great moral conflict.”
“I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality… I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.”
“Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself.”
“I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made straight and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.”
“I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit together at the table of brotherhood.”
“History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.”
“Any religion that professes to be concerned about the souls of men and is not concerned about the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strangle them and the social conditions that cripple them is a spiritually moribund religion awaiting burial.”
“Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend.”
“Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.”
“A riot is the language of the unheard.”
“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.”
