Martin Luther King, Jr. Quotes

I've Always Tried To Be What I Call Militantly Nonviolent. I Don't Believe That Anyone Could Seriously Accuse Me Of Not Being Totally Committed To The Breakdown Of Segregation.

I Never Cease To Wonder At The Amazing Presumption Of Much Of White Society, Assuming That They Have The Right To Bargain With The Negro For His Freedom.

I Feel That The Time Is Always Right To Do What Is Right. Where Progress For The Negro In America Is Concerned, There Is A Tragic Misconception Of Time Among Whites. They Seem To Cherish A Strange, Irrational Notion That Something In The Very Flow Of Time Will Cure All Ills.

There Is No Truth To The Myth That Negroes Depreciate Property. The Fact Is That Most Negroes Are Kept Out Of Residential Neighborhoods So Long That When One Of Us Is Finally Sold A Home, It's Already Depreciated.

Capitalism Started Out With A Noble And High Motive, But Like Most Human Systems It Fell Victim To The Very Thing It Was Revolting Against.

I Imagine You Already Know That I Am Much More Socialistic In My Economic Theory Than Capitalistic.

I'm Thinking Of Love In Action And Not Something Where You Say, "love Your Enemies," And Just Leave It At That, But You Love Your Enemies To The Point That You're Willing To Sit-in At A Lunch Counter In Order To Help Them Find Themselves. You're Willing To Go To Jail.

Many Of The Ugly Pages Of American History Have Been Obscured And Forgotten. A Society Is Always Eager To Cover Misdeeds With A Cloak Of Forgetfulness, But No Society Can Fully Repress An Ugly Past When The Ravages Persist Into The Present. America Owes A Debt Of Justice Which It Has Only Begun To Pay. If It Loses The Will To Finish Or Slackens In Its Determination, History Will Recall Its Crimes And The Country That Would Be Great Will Lack The Most Indispensable Element Of Greatness — Justice.

Five Score Years Ago, A Great American, In Whose Symbolic Shadow We Stand Today Signed The Emancipation Proclamation. This Momentous Decree Came As A Great Beacon Light Of Hope To Millions Of Negro Slaves Who Had Been Seared In The Flames Of Withering Injustice. It Came As A Joyous Daybreak To End The Long Night Of Their Captivity. But One Hundred Years Later, We Must Face The Tragic Fact That The Negro Is Still Not Free.

I Think That We've Got To Come To See This. The Negro Is An American.

Many People In Harlem Never Go Out Of Harlem. I Mean They'd Never Even Been Downtown. And You Can See How This Bitterness Can Accumulate. Here You See People Crowded And Hovered Up In Ghettos And Slums With No Hope.they See No Way Out.

[malcolm X] Had Said A Great Deal About Nonviolence, Criticizing Nonviolence, And Saying That I Approved Of Negro Men And Women Being Bitten By Dogs And The Fire Hoses, And I Say, Say Go On And Not Defend Yourself. I Think This Kind Of Response Grew Out Of The Build Up, All Of The Talk About My Being A Sort Of Polished Uncle Tom.