Quotes by Martin Luther King

All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality.

I submit that 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.

In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.

It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important.

Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man's sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true.

Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.

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

Segregation is the adultery of an illicit intercourse between injustice and immorality.

Ten thousand fools proclaim themselves into obscurity, while one wise man forgets himself into immortality.

We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.

When you are right you cannot be too radical; when you are wrong, you cannot be too conservative.

The hope of a secure and livable world lies with disciplined nonconformists who are dedicated to justice, peace and brotherhood.
('Strength to Love,' 1963)

All progress is precarious, and the solution of one problem brings us face to face with another problem.
('Strength to Love,' 1963)

The good neighbor looks beyond the external accidents and discerns those inner qualities that make all men human and, therefore, brothers.
('Strength to Love,' 1963)

I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. That is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.
(Accepting Nobel Peace Prize, Dec. 10, 1964)

Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time; the need for mankind to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence. Mankind must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.
(December 11, 1964)

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
(Letter from Birmingham Jail, April 16, 1963)

The church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society.
(Letter from Birmingham Jail, April 1963)

Now, I say to you today my friends, even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: - 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.'
(Speech at Civil Rights March on Washington, August 28, 1963)

I submit to you that if a man hasn't discovered something he will die for, he isn't fit to live.
(Speech in Detroit, June 23, 1963)