Martin Luther King Jr.
American Baptist minister, civil rights leader, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate. Drawing on the nonviolent satyagraha of Gandhi, the social gospel of Walter Rauschenbusch, and the Black church tradition, King led the Montgomery bus boycott, the Birmingham campaign, and the March on Washington — and articulated, in speeches and books, a vision of the "beloved community" grounded in agape love and economic justice. Assassinated in Memphis in 1968 at the age of 39, his words remain a foundational text of American moral imagination.
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quotes in library
Quotes by Martin Luther King Jr.
104 quotes“Take the first step in faith. You don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.”
faithStrength to Love
“Be a bush if you can't be a tree. If you can't be a highway, just be a trail.”
authenticitySpeeches and Letters
“Whatever you do, do it well.”
excellenceSpeeches and Letters
“It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated.”
interrelationLetter from Birmingham Jail
“Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.”
hateStrength to Love
“Love is the most durable power in the world.”
loveStrength to Love
“Only love can drive out hate.”
loveStrength to Love
“All progress is precarious. The solution of one problem brings us face to face with another.”
progressWhere Do We Go from Here
“The good neighbor looks beyond the external accidents and discerns those inner qualities that make all men human.”
neighborStrength to Love
“There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love.”
loveStrength to Love
“We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society.”
societyWhere Do We Go from Here
“True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar.”
compassionWhere Do We Go from Here
“Property is intended to serve life. Not to be served.”
propertyWhere Do We Go from Here
“Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power.”
scienceStrength to Love
“The dignity of every human being demands that we struggle for justice.”
dignityLetter from Birmingham Jail
“A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.”
leadershipSpeeches and Letters
“The end of life is not to be happy. The end of life is to do the will of God.”
purposeStrength to Love
“Have we not come to such an impasse in the modern world that we must love our enemies — or else?”
loveStrength to Love
“Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.”
choiceStrength to Love
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