Martin Luther King was an American religious leader and civil-rights activist. King participated in and led marches for blacks’ right to vote, desegregation, labor rights, and other basic civil rights. He strongly believed in Gandhi’s philosophy of nonviolence.
At the age of thirty-five, Martin Luther King, Jr., was the youngest man to have received the Nobel Peace Prize. When notified of his selection, he announced that he would turn over the prize money of $54,123 to the furtherance of the civil rights movement.
Martin Luther King dreamt that all inhabitants of the United States would be judged by their personal qualities and not by the color of their skin. In April 1968 he was murdered by a white racist. Four years earlier, he had received the Peace Prize for his nonviolent campaign against racism.
Dr. King delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963 which strongly made his status as a social change leader and helped inspire the nation to act on civil rights. Dr. King was later named Time magazine’s “Man of the Year.
Martin Luther King Jr. Inspiring Quotes on Life
Forgiveness is not an occasional act. It is a permanent attitude.
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.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.
Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.
Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle.
Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into friend.
The quality, not the longevity, of one’s life is what is important.
Let no man pull you so low as to hate him.
We are not makers of history. We are made by history.
Hate is just as injurious to the hater as it is to the hated. Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Many of our inner conflicts are rooted in hate. This is why psychiatrists say, “Love or perish.” Hate is too great a burden to bear.
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.
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.
You can kill the dreamer, but you can’t kill the dream.
Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.
He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love.
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.
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.
There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe nor politic nor popular, but he must take it because his conscience tells him it is right.
No one really knows why they are alive until they know what they’d die for.
A man who won’t die for something is not fit to live.
We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.
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.
Never, never be afraid to do what’s right, especially if the well-being of a person or animal is at stake. Society’s punishments are small compared to the wounds we inflict on our soul when we look the other way.
If I cannot do great things, I can do small things in a great way.
