Best Martin Luther King Jr. Quotes
Martin Luther King Jr. Quotes Education, Equality, Justice, Unity, Courage, Leadership, Life, Love & Kindness! A Baptist minister’s son, Martin Luther King Jr., was born in Atlanta, Georgia, on January 15, 1929. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. got a Ph.D. in theology and helped organize the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955, the first significant civil rights action in the United States. He promoted peaceful civil disobedience and opposition to segregation and discrimination, inspiring Mohandas Gandhi.
Even though King and his supporters faced violence throughout their marches across the South, they persevered, and the cause grew in strength. An excellent speaker, Luther, drew on Christian and American ideas to gain increasing federal government levels and Northern white support for his political cause.
Consequently, the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, organized by Bayard Rustin and A. Philip Randolph, culminated in King’s iconic “I Have a Dream” speech in 1963. In front of the Lincoln Memorial, many people came to hear the emotional speech. This year saw two significant achievements for the civil rights movement: the ratification of Amendment 24, which repealed the poll tax, and the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which forbade racial discrimination in employment and education and outlawed racial segregation in public locations.
Later that year, King became the youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. He died on April 4, 1968, but the work done in his lifetime was momentous for America. However, one of the most important aspects of Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy will be his powerful speeches, which inspired so many.
Best Martin Luther King Jr. Quotes
1. “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” – Martin Luther King Jr.
2. “No one really knows why they are alive until they know what they’d die for.” – Martin Luther King Jr.
3. “We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right.” – Martin Luther King Jr.
4. “We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.
5. “Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.
6. “The quality, not the longevity, of one’s life is what is important” – Martin Luther King Jr.
7. “A man who won’t die for something is not fit to live.” – Martin Luther King Jr.
8. “Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend” – Martin Luther King Jr.
9. “We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.” – Martin Luther King Jr.
10. “He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love.” – Martin Luther King Jr.
11. “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.” – Martin Luther King Jr.
12. “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.” – Martin Luther King Jr.
13. “It is not enough to say we must not wage war. It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it.” – Martin Luther King Jr.
14. “Nonviolence is absolute commitment to the way of love. Love is not emotional bash; it is not empty sentimentalism. It is the active outpouring of one’s whole being into the being of another.” – Martin Luther King Jr.
15. “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.” – Martin Luther King Jr.
16. “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.
17. “When people are voiceless, they will have temper tantrums like a child who has not been paid attention to. And riots are massive temper tantrums from a neglected and voiceless people.” – The Autobiography of Martin Luther King Jr. (page 293)
18. “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.” – Martin Luther King Jr.
19. “The past is prophetic in that it asserts loudly that wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows” – Martin Luther King Jr.
20. “He was an eloquent spokesman for his point of view and no one can honestly doubt that Malcolm had a great concern for the problems that we face as a race. While we did not always see eye to eye on methods to solve the race problems, I always had a deep affection for Malcolm and felt that he had the great ability to put his finger on the existence and root of the problem.” – Martin Luther King Jr on Malcolm X
21. “Those who are not looking for happiness are the most likely to find it, because those who are searching forget that the surest way to be happy is to seek happiness for others.” – Martin Luther King Jr.
22. “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.
23. “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.” – Martin Luther King Jr.
24. “We must concentrate not merely on the negative expulsion of war but the positive affirmation of peace.” – Martin Luther King Jr.