Martin Luther King, Jr. Rat Quotations

Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and establish such creative tension that a community that has consistently refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue.

We decided to set our direct-action program around the Easter season, realizing that, with exception of Christmas, this was the largest shopping period of the year. Knowing that a strong economic withdrawal program would be the by-product of direct action.

Are you able to accept blows without retaliating?" and "Are you able to endure the ordeals of jail?"

We were not unmindful of the difficulties involved. So we decided to go through a process of self-purification.

We had no alternative except that of preparing for direct action, whereby we would present our very bodies as a means of laying our case before the conscience of the local and national community.

Negro leaders sought to negotiate with the city fathers. But the political leaders consistently refused to engage in good-faith negotiation.

I would not hesitate to say that it is unfortunate that so-called demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham at this time, but I would say in more emphatic terms that it is even more unfortunate that the white power structure of this city left the Negro community with no other alternative.

I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham.

Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid.

I too am compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my particular hometown.

If I sought to answer all of the criticisms that cross my desk, my secretaries would be engaged in little else in the course of the day, and I would have no time for constructive work.

Lukewarm acceptance is more bewildering than outright rejection.

But I say to you, my friends, there are certain things in our nation and in the world which I am proud to be maladjusted and which I hope all men of good-will will be maladjusted until the good societies realize.

You have very little morally persuasive power with people who can feel your underlying contempt.

What is more tragic than to see a person who has risen to the disciplined heights of tough-mindedness but has at the same time sunk to the passionless depths of hard-heartedness?

Lightning makes no sound until it strikes.

We have flown the air like birds and swum the sea like fishes, but have yet to learn the simple act of walking the earth like brothers.

When we rise in the morning... at the table we drink coffee which is provided to us by a South American, or tea by a Chinese, or cocoa by a West African; before we leave for our jobs we are already beholden to more than half the world.

Call it democracy, or call it democratic socialism, but there must be a better distribution of wealth within this country for all God's children.

If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as a Michaelangelo 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 street sweeper who did his job well.

Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane.

We may have all come on different ships, but we're in the same boat now.

Was not Jesus an extremist in love? - "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, pray for them that despitefully use you."

Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.

The time is always right to do what is right.

Those who love peace must learn to organize as effectively as those who love war.

I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.

If you succumb to the temptation of using violence in the struggle, unborn generations will be the recipients of a long and desolate night of bitterness, and your chief legacy to the future will be an endless reign of meaningless chaos.

Life's most persistent and urgent question is, 'What are you doing for others?'

We must learn that passively to accept an unjust system is to cooperate with that system, and thereby to become a participant in its evil.

Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.

If you can't fly then run, if you can't run then walk, if you can't walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.

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.

Quietly endure, silently suffer and patiently wait.

There is no gain without struggle.

It is cheerful to God when you rejoice or laugh from the bottom of your heart.

The Negro needs the white man to free him from his fears. The white man needs the Negro to free him from his guilt.

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

Our generation will not have regretted both perverse crimes, and the eerie silence of the kind

The purpose of direct action is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation.

Let the Negro march. Let him make pilgrimages to city hall. Let him go on freedom rides. And above all, make an effort to understand why he must do this. For if his frustration and despair are allowed to continue piling up, millions of Negroes will seek solace and security in black-nationalist ideologies. And this, inevitably, would lead to a frightening racial nightmare.

Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church's often vocal sanction of things as they are.

One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.

As long as there is poverty in the world I can never be rich, even if I have a billion dollars. As long as diseases are rampant and millions of people in this world cannot expect to live more than twenty-eight or thirty years, I can never be totally healthy even if I just got a good checkup at Mayo Clinic. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the way our world is made. No individual or nation can stand out boasting of being independent. We are interdependent.

The means by which we live have outdistanced the ends for which we live.

The richer we have become materially, the poorer we become morally and spiritually. We have learned to fly in the air like birds and swim in the sea like fish, but we have not learned the simple art of living together as brothers.

Courage faces fear and thereby masters it

The greatest purveyor of violence in the world : My own Government, I can not be Silent.

There comes a time when silence is betrayal.

No one really knows why they are alive until they know what they'd die for.

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

Free at last, Free at last, Thank God almighty we are free at last.

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.

I just want to do God's will. And he's allowed me to go to the mountain. And I've looked over, and I've seen the promised land! I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land.

Seeing is not always believing.

The art of acceptance is the art of making someone who has just done you a small favor wish that he might have done you a greater one.

A right delayed is a right denied.

Even if our motives are presently misunderstood. We will reach the goal of freedom in Birmingham and all over the nation, because the goal of America is freedom.

If the church of today does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authentic ring, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

White Americans must be made to understand the basic motives underlying Negro demonstrations. Many pent-up resentments and latent frustrations are boiling inside the Negro, and he must release them. It is not a threat but a fact of history that if an oppressed people's pent-up emotions are not nonviolently released, they will be violently released.

Religion operates not only on the vertical plane but also on the horizontal. It seeks not only to integrate men with God but to integrate men with men and each man with himself.

As television beamed the image of this extraordinary gathering across the border oceans, everyone who believed in man's capacity to better himself had a moment of inspiration and confidence in the future of the human race.

History will have to recordThat the greatest tragedy of this period of social transitionWas not the vitriolic words and the violent actions of the bad peopleBut the appalling silence and indifference of the good.Our generation will have to repent notOnly for the words and actions of the children of darknessBut also for the fears and apathy of thechildren of light.

I'm grateful to God that, through the Negro church, the dimension of nonviolence entered our struggle.

Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider.

The day we see the truth and cease to speak is the day we begin to die

A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.

The movement for equality and justice can only be a success if it has both a mass and militant character; the barriers to be overcome require both.

A riot is the language of the unheard.

Was not Abraham Lincoln an extremist? - "This nation cannot survive half slave and half free."

Wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.

Forgiveness is not an occasional act, it is a constant attitude.

As the weeks and months unfolded, we realized that we were the victims of a broken promise.

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.

If you haven't found something worth dying for, you're not fit to live.

The greatness of our God lies in the fact that [He] is both tough minded and tender hearted.

To have serpentlike qualities devoid of dovelike qualities is to be passionless, mean, and selfish.

So when Jesus says "Love your enemies," he is setting forth a profound and ultimately inescapable admonition.

By nonviolent resistance, the Negro can also enlist all men of good will in his struggle for equality.

The Negro's problem will not be solved by running away.

If the Negro is to achieve the goal of integration, he must organize himself into a militant and nonviolent mass movement.

The principle of nonviolent resistance seeks to reconcile the truths of two opposites-Acquiescence and violence -while avoiding the extremes and immoralities of both.

Violence is not the way.

Through nonviolent resistance the Negro will be able to rise to the noble height of opposing the unjust system while loving the perpetrators of the system.

Life isn't worth living until you have found something worth dying for.

There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right.

Never, never be afraid to do what's right, especially if the well-being of a person or animal is at stake. Society's punishments are small compared to the wounds we inflict on our soul when we look the other way.

Everybody can be great...because anybody can serve. 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.

Before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth, we were here. Before the pen of Jefferson etched across the pages of history the majestic words of the Declaration of Independence, we were here.

Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.

Only in the darkness can you see the stars.

We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.

An eye for an eye leaves everybody blind.

A second way that oppressed people sometimes deal with oppression is to resort to physical violence and corroding hatred.

The Negro cannot win the respect of his oppressor by acquiescing; he merely increases the oppressor's arrogance and contempt.

Violence often brings about momentary results.

To accept injustice or segregation passively is to say to the oppressor that his actions are morally right.

The negro cannot win the respect of the white people of the south or the peoples of the world if he is willing to sell the future of his children for his personal and immediate comfort and safety.

Nonviolence is an imperative in order to bring about ultimate community.