Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Martin Luther King, Jr. (American Civil Rights Leader)

The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–68,) born Michael Luther King, Jr., was an American Baptist minister and leader of the civil rights movement. Known for his dedication to ending segregation peacefully, he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.

In 1955, when King was only 26 and serving as a priest in Montgomery, Alabama, a seamstress named Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger on a city bus. King took up her cause and led a year-long Montgomery bus boycott during which his house was bombed, and he was assaulted and arrested. In 1957, the Supreme Court ruled that the segregation of buses and public facilities was unconstitutional.

The Montgomery bus boycott put King at the vanguard of the civil rights movement. In 1963, he joined other civil rights leaders at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, where he gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to an audience of 200,000.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. And the Voting Rights Act of 1965 ended voter discrimination in many Southern states.

In 1967, King delivered a speech called “Beyond Vietnam / A Time to Break Silence,” denouncing America’s involvement in the Vietnam War and the recruitment of poor and minority soldiers. The next year, King was assassinated at age 39 while standing on the balcony of a Memphis motel. He was preparing to lead a protest rally in solidarity with sanitation workers who were on strike. His death sparked riots in sixty cities.

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Whatever your life’s work is, do it well. A man should do his job so well that the living, the dead, and the unborn could do it no better.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Work, Society

Effects one directly, effects all indirectly.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Kindness

Life has its beginning and its maturity comes into being when an individual rises above self to something greater.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

War is a poor chisel to carve out tomorrow.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: War

Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Peace

No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Satisfaction

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.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Property

Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Hatred, Love, Hate

Discrimination is a hellhound that gnaws at Negroes in every waking moment of their lives to remind them that the lie of their inferiority is accepted as truth in the society dominating them.
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.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Humanity, Humankind, Violence

Life at its best is a creative synthesis of opposites in fruitful harmony.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

It is a tragic mix-up when the United States spends $500,000 for every enemy soldier killed, and only $53 annually on the victims of poverty.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Poverty

Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

We may have all come on different ships, but we’re in the same boat now.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Help, Society, Cooperation

Each of us is something of a schizophrenic personality, tragically divided against ourselves.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Self-Discovery

The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

I have a dream.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Dreams

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Goodness, Tolerance, Light, Hate, Love

Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Oppression

We must combine the toughness of the serpent with the softness of the dove, a tough mind and a tender heart.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: The Mind, Mind

In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Activism, Enemies, Friendship, Silence

The means by which we live have outdistanced the ends for which we live. Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Weapon, Science, Humanity, Power

All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence. , Jr 1929
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Labor, Pain, Work, Excellence

Riots are the voices of the unheard.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Revolutionaries, Revolution, Revolutions

Violence ends by defeating itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

Justice is love correcting that which revolts against love.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

I am coming to feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than the people of goodwill. 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. We must come to see that human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability. It comes through the tireless efforts and persistent work of men willing to be co-workers with God, and without this hard work time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, and forever realize that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy, and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Integrity, Time, Goodness, Acceptance, Spending time wisely, Time Management

We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Topics: Freedom, Society

It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence in this world; it’s nonviolence or nonexistence.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

I feel that we will continue to have a non-violent movement, and we will continue to find the vast majority of Negroes committed to non-violence, at least as the best tactical approach and from a pragmatic point of view as the best strategy in dealing with the problem of racial injustice. Realism impels me to admit, however, that when there is justice and the pursuit of justice, violence appears, and where there is injustice and frustration, the potentialities for violence are greater, and I would like to strongly stress the point that the more we can achieve victories through non-violence, the more it will be possible to keep the non-violent discipline at the center of the movement. But the more we find individuals facing conditions of frustration, conditions of disappointment and seething despair as a result of the slow pace of things and the failure to change conditions, the more it will be possible for the apostles of violence to interfere.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

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