Martin Luther King Jr Quotes

411 Martin Luther King Jr Quotes

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Our spirit never died even though the weight of centuries was a crushing burden.
Martin Luther King Jr

Our freedom was not won a century ago, it is not won today; but some small part of it is in our hands, and we are marching no longer by ones and twos but in legions of thousands, convinced now it cannot be denied by any human force.
Martin Luther King Jr

Today the question is not whether we shall be free but by what course we will win.
Martin Luther King Jr

The question ‘What is man?’ is one of the most important questions confronting any generation. The whole political, social and economic structure of a society is largely determined by its answer to this pressing question.
Martin Luther King Jr

Here are those who look upon man as little more than an animal. They would say that man is a cosmic accident, that his whole life can be explained by matter in motion. Then there are those who would lift man almost to the position of a God.
Martin Luther King Jr

The average man has enough fat in him to make about seven bars of soap, enough iron to make a medium-sized nail, enough sugar to fill a shaker, enough lime to whitewash a chicken coop, enough phosphorus for about 2,220 match tips, and enough magnesium for a does of magnesia. When all of this was added up in terms of the market values of that day it came to about ninety-eight cents… Man’s bodily stuff is worth only ninety-eight cents.
Martin Luther King Jr

There is something within man that cannot be explained in terms of dollars and cents. There is something within man that cannot be reduced to chemical and biological terms, for man is more than a tiny vagary of whirling electrons. He is more than a wisp of smoke from a knitless smoldering. Man has rational capacity; man has a mind; man can reason. This distinguished him from the lower animals. And so, somehow, man is in nature, and yet he is above nature; he is in time, and yet he is above time; he is in space, and yet he is above space. This means that he can do things that lower animals, could never do. He can think a poem and write it, he can think a symphony and compose it; he can think up a great civilization and create it.
Martin Luther King Jr

We know that man is made, for the stars, created for the ever lasting, born for eternity. We know that man is crowned with glory and honor, and so long as he lives on the low level he will be frustrated, disillusioned, and bewildered.
Martin Luther King Jr

No matter how small on thinks his life is in terms of the norms of the world and the so-called big jobs, he must realize that it has cosmic significance…
Martin Luther King Jr

All man are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be.
Martin Luther King Jr



The basic conflict is not really over the buses. Yet we believe that, if the method we use in dealing with equality in the buses can eliminate injustice within ourselves, we shall at the same time be attacking the basis of injustice – man’s hostility to man. This can only be done when we challenge the white community to re-examine its assumptions as we are now prepared to re-examine ours.
Martin Luther King Jr

Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality.
Martin Luther King Jr

The hear-hearted person never truly loves. He engages in a crass utilitarianism that values other people mainly according to their usefulness to him. He never experiences the beauty of friendship, because he is too cold to feel affection for another and is too self-centered to share another’s joy and sorrow. He is an isolated island. No outpouring of love links him with the mainland of humanity.
Martin Luther King Jr

The hardhearted person lacks the capacity for genuine compassion. He is unmoved by the pains and afflictions of his brothers. He passes unfortunate men every day, but he never really sees them. He gives dollars to a worthwhile charity, but he gives not of his spirit.
Martin Luther King Jr

The hardhearted individual never sees people as people, but rather as mere objects or as impersonal cogs in an ever-turning wheel. In the vast wheel of industry, he sees men as hands. In the massive wheel of big city life, he sees men as digits in a multitude. In the deadly wheel of army life, he sees men as numbers in a regiment. He depersonalizes life.
Martin Luther King Jr

The rich fool was condemned not because he was not tough-minded, but rather because he was not tenderhearted. Life for him was a mirror in which he saw only himself, and not a window through which he saw other selves.
Martin Luther King Jr

To have serpentlike qualities devoid of dovelike qualities is to be passionless, mean and selfish. To have dovelike qualities without serpentlike qualities is to be sentimental, anemic, and aimless. We must combine strongly marked antitheses.
Martin Luther King Jr

The strong man holds in a living blend strongly marked opposites. The idealists are not usually realistic, and the realists are not usually idealistic. The militant are not generally known to be passive, nor the passive to be militant. Seldom are the humble self-assertive, or the self-assertive humble. But life at it’s best is a creative synthesis of opposites in fruitful harmony.
Martin Luther King Jr

It is pretty difficult to imagine a single person having, simultaneously the characteristics of the serpent and the dove, but… We must combine the toughness of the serpent and the softness of the dove, a tough mind and a tender heart.
Martin Luther King Jr

The tough mind is sharp and penetrating, breaking through the crust of legends and myths and sifting the true from the false. The tough-minded individual is astute and discerning. He has a strong, austere quality that makes for firmness of purpose and solidness of commitment.
Martin Luther King Jr



Advertisers have long since learned that most people are soft-minded and they capitalize on this susceptibility with skillful and effective slogans.
Martin Luther King Jr

Few people have the toughness of mind to judge critically and to discern the true from the false, the fact from the fiction. Our minds are constantly being invaded by legions of half-truths, prejudices, and false facts. One of the great needs of mankind is to be lifted above the morass of false propaganda.
Martin Luther King Jr

Soft-minded individuals are prone to embrace all kinds of superstitions. Their minds are constantly invaded by irrational fears…
Martin Luther King Jr

As the elevator made its upward climb in one of the large hotels of New York City, I noticed for the first time that there was no thirteen[th] floor, - floor fourteen followed floor twelve. On inquiring from the elevator operator the reason for this omission, he said ‘This practice is followed by most large hotels because of the fear of numerous people to say on a thirteen[th] floor. The real foolishness of the fear is to be found in the fact that the fourteen[th] floor is actually the thirteenth.
Martin Luther King Jr

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.
Martin Luther King Jr

An elderly segregationist in the South is reported to have said, ‘I have come to see now that desegregation is, inevitable. But I pray God that it will not take place until after I die.’
Martin Luther King Jr

The soft-minded person always wants to freeze the moment and to hold life in the gripping yoke of sameness.
Martin Luther King Jr

There may be a conflict between… soft-minded religionists and tough-minded scientists, but not between science and religion.
Martin Luther King Jr

Science investigates; religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge that is power; religion gives man wisdom that is control. Science deals mainly with facts; religion deals mainly with values. The two are not rivals. They are complimentary. Science keeps religion from sinking into the valley of crippling irrationalism and paralyzing obscurantism. Religion prevents science from falling into the marsh of obsolete materialism and moral nihilism.
Martin Luther King Jr

Dictators, capitalizing on soft-mindedness, have led men to acts of barbarity and terror that are unthinkable in civilized society.
Martin Luther King Jr



Soft mindedness is one of the basic causes of race prejudice. The tough-minded person always examines the facts before he reaches conclusions; in short he post judges. The tender-minded person reaches a conclusion before he has examined the first fact; in short, he prejudges and is prejudiced. Race prejudice is based on groundless fears, suspicions, and misunderstanding.
Martin Luther King Jr

There is little hope for us until we become tough-minded enough to break loose from the shackles of prejudice, half-truths, and downright ignorance. The shape of the world today does not permit us the luxury of soft-mindedness. A nation or a civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on an installment plan.
Martin Luther King Jr

Tough-mindedness without tender heartedness is cold and detached leaving one’s life in a perpetual winter devoid of the warmth of spring and the gentle heat of summer.
Martin Luther King Jr

What is more tragic than to see a person who has risen to the disciplined heights of tough-mindedness but has at the same time sunk to the passionless depths of hard-heartedness?
Martin Luther King Jr

We… must bring together tough-mindedness and tenderheartedness, if we are to move creatively toward the goal of freedom and justice.
Martin Luther King Jr

Soft-minded acquiescence is cowardly.
Martin Luther King Jr

Violence brings only temporary victories; violence, by creating many more social problems than it solves, never brings permanent peace. I am convinced that if we succumb to the temptation to use violence in our struggle for freedom, unborn generations will be the recipients of a long and desolate night of bitterness, and our chief legacy to them will be a never-ending reign of chaos.
Martin Luther King Jr

Nonconformity is creative when it is controlled and directed by a transformed life and is constructive when it embraces a new mental outlook.
Martin Luther King Jr

‘Do not conform’ is difficult advice in a generation when crowd pressures have unconsciously conditioned our minds and feet to move to the rhythmic drumbeat of the status quo. Many voices and forces urge us to choose the path of least resistance, and bid us never to fight for an unpopular cause and never to be found in a pathetic minority of two or three.
Martin Luther King Jr

Some philosophical sociologists suggest that morality is merely group consensus and the folkways are the right ways. Some psychologists say that mental and emotional adjustment is the reward of thinking and acting like other people.
Martin Luther King Jr



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