3 December 2020 Martin Luther King, Jr. Pity may represent little more than the impersonal concern which prompts the mailing of a check, but true sympathy is the personal concern which demands the giving of one’s soul.
3 December 2020 Martin Luther King, Jr. Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal.
3 December 2020 Martin Luther King, Jr. I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.
3 December 2020 Martin Luther King, Jr. We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.
3 December 2020 Martin Luther King, Jr. The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character – that is the goal of true education.
3 December 2020 Martin Luther King, Jr. 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.
3 December 2020 Martin Luther King, Jr. 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.
3 December 2020 Martin Luther King, Jr. Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.
3 December 2020 Martin Luther King, Jr. 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.
3 December 2020 Martin Luther King, Jr. Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.
3 December 2020 Martin Luther King, Jr. The quality, not the longevity, of one’s life is what is important.
3 December 2020 Martin Luther King, Jr. 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.
3 December 2020 Martin Luther King, Jr. There is nothing more tragic than to find an individual bogged down in the length of life, devoid of breadth.
3 December 2020 Martin Luther King, Jr. Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’
3 December 2020 Martin Luther King, Jr. Property is intended to serve life, and no matter how much we surround it with rights and respect, it has no personal being. It is part of the earth man walks on. It is not man.
3 December 2020 Martin Luther King, Jr. 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.
3 December 2020 Martin Luther King, Jr. Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into friend.
3 December 2020 Martin Luther King, Jr. We must concentrate not merely on the negative expulsion of war but the postive affirmation of peace.
3 December 2020 Martin Luther King, Jr. Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.
3 December 2020 Martin Luther King, Jr. That old law about ‘an eye for an eye’ leaves everybody blind. The time is always right to do the right thing.
3 December 2020 Martin Luther King, Jr. A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on the installment plan.
3 December 2020 Martin Luther King, Jr. 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?’
3 December 2020 Martin Luther King, Jr. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people.
3 December 2020 Martin Luther King, Jr. Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.
3 December 2020 Martin Luther King, Jr. It is incontestable and deplorable that Negroes have committed crimes but they are derivative crimes. They are born of the greater crimes of the white society.
