Martin Luther King Jr. Quotes That Will Inspire You to Promote Peace and Equality (2022) — Quotes Sharing
1. “You can kill the dreamer, but you can’t kill the dream.”
2. “It does not matter how long you live, but how well you do it.”
3. “Nonviolence demands that the means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek.”
4. “Only in the darkness can you see the stars.”
5. “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’”
6. “One day we will learn that the heart can never be totally right when the head is totally wrong.”
7. “Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.”
8. “The time is always right to do what is right.”
9. “We are not makers of history. We are made by history.”
10. “We must walk on in the days ahead with an audacious faith in the future.”
11. “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
12. “Even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream.”
13. “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
14. “I have a dream that one day right there in Alabama little Black boys and little Black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.”
15. “In some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty.”
16. “Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”
17. “We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right.”
18. “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”
Martin Luther King Jr. Quotes to Inspire You
19. “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
20. “We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.”
21. “The quality, not the longevity, of one’s life, is what is important.”
22. “Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle.”
23. “I want to be the white man’s brother, not his brother-in-law.”
24. “No one really knows why they are alive until they know what they’d die for.”
25. “Almost always, the creative dedicated minority has made the world better.”
26. “I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave-owners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood.”
27. “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.”
28. “Be a bush if you can’t be a tree. If you can’t be a highway, just be a trail. If you can’t be a sun, be a star. For it isn’t by size that you win or fail. Be the best of whatever you are.”
29. “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.”
30. “If I cannot do great things, I can do small things in a great way.”
31. “Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.”
Martin Luther King Jr. Quotes That Will Change Your Life Perspective
32. “For when people get caught up with that which is right and they are willing to sacrifice for it, there is no stopping point short of victory.”
33. “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.”
34. “The difference between a dreamer and a visionary is that a dreamer has his eyes closed and a visionary has his eyes open.”
35. “The beauty of genuine brotherhood and peace is more precious than diamonds or silver or gold.”
36. “No work is insignificant. All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.”
37. “We must learn that passively to accept an unjust system is to cooperate with that system, and thereby to become a participant in its evil.”
38. “An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.”
39. “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.”
40. “Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.”
41. “You will change your mind; you will change your looks; you will change your smile, laugh, and ways but no matter what you change, you will always be you.”
42. “Shallow understanding from people of goodwill is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.”
43. “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.”
44. “There comes a time when people get tired of being pushed out of the glittering sunlight of life’s July and left standing amid the piercing chill of an alpine November.”
45. “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.”
46. “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.”
47. “We cannot walk alone. And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back.”
48. “When you are right you cannot be too radical; when you are wrong, you cannot be too conservative.”
Martin Luther King Jr. Quotes to Help You Spread Love and Positivity
49. “There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love.”
50. “I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.”
51. “He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love.”
52. “Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend.”
53. “I know that love is ultimately the only answer to mankind’s problems.”
54. “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”
55. “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.”
56. “Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.”
57. “Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it.”
58. “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.”
59. “Love is the greatest force in the universe. It is the heartbeat of the moral cosmos. He who loves is a participant in the being of God.”
60. “Hate is just as injurious to the hater as it is to the hated. Like unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Many of our inner conflicts are rooted in hate.”
61. “Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.”
62. “We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We will meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will. And we shall continue to love you.”
63. “Every now and then I ask myself, ‘What is it that I would want to be said?’ I’d like somebody to mention that day, that ‘Martin Luther King Jr., tried to give his life serving others.’ I’d like for somebody to say that day, that ‘Martin Luther King Jr., tried to love somebody.’”
64. “You know, a lot of people don’t love themselves. And they go through life with deep and haunting emotional conflicts. So the length of life means that you must love yourself. And you know what loving yourself also means? It means that you’ve got to accept yourself.”
Short Martin Luther King Jr. Quotes to Ponder On
65. “There is no gain without struggle.”
66. “A lie cannot live.”
67. “A riot is the language of the unheard.”
68. “Hate destroys the hater.”
69. “There comes a time when silence is betrayal.”
70. “No person has the right to rain on your dreams.”
71. “Seeing is not always believing.”
Encouraging Martin Luther King Jr. Quotes
72. “Courage is an inner resolution to go forward despite obstacles.”
73. “We must build dikes of courage to hold back the flood of fear.”
74. “A man who won’t die for something is not fit to live.”
75. “We must substitute courage for caution.”
76. “Courage is the power of the mind to overcome fear.”
77. “There is nothing more majestic than the determined courage of individuals willing to suffer and sacrifice for their freedom and dignity.”
78. “Courageous men never lose the zest for living even though their life situation is zestless; cowardly men, overwhelmed by the uncertainties of life, lose the will to live.”
79. “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”
80. “I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made straight and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.”
Martin Luther King Jr. Quotes About Human Rights and Equality
81. “The moral arc of the universe bends at the elbow of justice.”
82. “A right delayed is a right denied.”
83. “The hope of a secure and livable world lies with disciplined nonconformists who are dedicated to justice, peace, and brotherhood.”
84. “Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.”
85. “If you lose hope, somehow you lose the vitality that keeps moving, you lose that courage to be, that quality that helps you go on in spite of it all. And so today I still have a dream.”
86. “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.”
87. “We are prone to judge success by the index of our salaries or the size of our automobiles rather than by the quality of our service and relationship to mankind.”
88. “A man dies when he refuses to stand up for that which is right. A man dies when he refuses to stand up for justice. A man dies when he refuses to take a stand for that which is true.”
89. “We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy.”
90. “Law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress.”
91. “The contemporary tendency in our society is to base our distribution on scarcity, which has vanished, and to compress our abundance into the overfed mouths of the middle and upper classes until they gag with superfluity. If democracy is to have a breadth of meaning, it is necessary to adjust this inequity. It is not only moral, but it is also intelligent. We are wasting and degrading human life by clinging to archaic thinking.”
92. “All we say to America is, ‘Be true to what you said on paper.’ If I lived in China or even Russia, or any totalitarian country, maybe I could understand the denial of certain basic first amendment privileges because they hadn’t committed themselves to that over there. But somewhere I read of the freedom of assembly. Somewhere I read of the freedom of speech. Somewhere I read of the freedom of the press. Somewhere I read that the greatness of America is the right to protest for right.”
Martin Luther King Jr. Quotes About Leadership and Power
93. “A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.”
94. “Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.”
95. “The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. The nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.”
96. “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.”
Martin Luther King Jr. Quotes on How He Values Equality and Freedom
97. “A dream of equality of opportunity, of privilege and property, widely distributed; a dream of a land where men will not take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few.”
98. “Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”
99. “The Negro needs the white man to free him from his fears. The white man needs the Negro to free him from his guilt.”
100. “The sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality.”
101. “Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.”
102. “Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice.”
103. “The problem of racism, the problem of economic exploitation, and the problem of war are all tied together. These are the triple evils that are interrelated.”
104. “It’s all right to tell a man to lift himself by his own bootstraps, but it is cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps.”
105. “The soft-minded man always fears change. He feels security in the status quo, and he has an almost morbid fear of the new. For him, the greatest pain is the pain of a new idea.”
106. “So I’m happy tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!”
107. “Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane.”
108. “Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself.”
109. “Three hundred years of humiliation, abuse, and deprivation cannot be expected to find a voice in a whisper.”
110. “We must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can’t ride you unless your back is bent.”
111. “Now is the time to open the doors of opportunity to all of God’s children. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood.”
112. “Whites, it must frankly be said, are not putting in a similar mass effort to reeducate themselves out of their racial ignorance. It is an aspect of their sense of superiority that the white people of America believe they have so little to learn.”
Martin Luther King Jr. Quotes on Nonviolence and World Peace
113. “The principle of self-defense, even involving weapons and bloodshed, has never been condemned, even by Gandhi.”
114. “It is not enough to say we must not wage war. It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it.”
115. “Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon, which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it. It is a sword that heals.”
116. “True peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice.”
117. “Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal.”
118. “We who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive.”
119. “The past is prophetic in that it asserts loudly that wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.”
120. “We must concentrate not merely on the negative expulsion of war but the positive affirmation of peace.”
121. “Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love-violence ends up defeating itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers.”
122. “Nonviolence means avoiding not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. You not only refuse to shoot a man, but you refuse to hate him.”
123. “Nonviolence is an absolute commitment to the way of love. Love is not an emotional bash; it is not empty sentimentalism. It is the active outpouring of one’s whole being into the being of another.”
124. “If we are to have peace on earth, our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Our loyalties must transcend our race, our tribe, our class, and our nation; and this means we must develop a world perspective.”
125. “Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral. I am not unmindful of the fact that violence often brings about momentary results. Nations have frequently won their independence in battle. But in spite of temporary victories, violence never brings permanent peace.”
Did Martin Luther King, Jr. Quotes Motivate You to Promote World Peace?
Martin Luther King Jr. was a well-known civil rights activist who dedicated his life to promoting world peace through nonviolent protest. Many people were inspired by his advocacy for making a difference in the world by living peacefully in a world full of respect and love.
Furthermore, he encourages them to see their worth as individuals despite differences in race and beliefs. We hope that these Martin Luther King Jr. quotes inspired you to be a part of the changes you want to see in the world.
Do you have any Martin Luther King Jr. quotes you’d like to share? Please include them in the comments section.
Originally published at https://quotessharing.com.
