Martin Luther King Jr. was one of the instrumental leaders in the American Civil Rights Movement who used his words to spark change. To this day, his words remain an everlasting reminder of the importance of fighting for what’s right and doing it with love in our hearts. His vision of a brighter future for the United States remains captured in his inspiring words and we’ve compiled some of his most influential quotes that are sure to enlighten your students.
Martin Luther King Jr. was one of the instrumental leaders in the American Civil Rights Movement who used his words to spark change. To this day, his words remain an everlasting reminder of the importance of fighting for what’s right and doing it with love in our hearts. His vision of a brighter future for the United States remains captured in his inspiring words and we’ve compiled some of his most influential quotes that are sure to enlighten your students.
1. “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.”
2. “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
3. “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
4. “The time is always right to do what is right.”
5. “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”
6. “Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty we are free at last!”
7. “The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character – that is the goal of true education.”
8. “We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.”
9. “Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.”
10. “A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.”
11. “Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend.”
12. “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?'”
13. “We may have all come on different ships, but we’re in the same boat now.”
14. “Let no man pull you so low as to hate him.”
15. “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”
16. “Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle.”
17. “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.”
18. “We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.”
19. “There is nothing more tragic than to find an individual bogged down in the length of life, devoid of breadth.”
20. “Everybody can be great… because anybody can serve.”
21. “Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”
22. “There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right.”
23. “A man can’t ride your back unless it’s bent.”
24. “Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.”
25. “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.”
26. “Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever.”
27. “I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”
28. “He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it.”
29. “Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon, which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it. It is a sword that heals.”
30. “We must build dikes of courage to hold back the flood of fear.”
31. “Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal.”
32. “It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me, and I think that’s pretty important.”
33. “War is a poor chisel to carve out tomorrow.”
34. “There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love.”
35. “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.”
36. “Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.”
37. “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.”
38. “Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal.”
39. “If a man has not discovered something that he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.”
40. “Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions.”
41. “Only in the darkness can you see the stars.”
42. “At the center of non-violence stands the principle of love.”
43. “One who condones evils is just as guilty as the one who perpetrates it.”
44. “True peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice.”
45. “Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.”
46. “Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice. Justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.”
47. “We must rapidly begin the shift from a ‘thing-oriented’ society to a ‘person-oriented’ society.”
48. “People fail to get along because they fear each other; they fear each other because they don’t know each other; they don’t know each other because they have not communicated with each other.”
49. “Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”
50. “Noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good.”
51. “No one really knows why they are alive until they know what they’d die for.”
52. “We cannot walk alone. And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back.”
53. “Forgiveness is not an occasional act; it is a constant attitude.”
54. “I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality.”
55. “We must concentrate not merely on the negative expulsion of war but the positive affirmation of peace.”
56. “We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right.”
57. “We must come to see that the end we seek is a society at peace with itself, a society that can live with its conscience.”
58. “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.”
59. “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.”
60. “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.”
61. “An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.”
62. “We are not makers of history. We are made by history.”
63. “The past is prophetic in that it asserts loudly that wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.”
64. “The quality, not the longevity, of one’s life is what is important.”
65. “The soft-minded man always fears change. He feels security in the status quo, and he has an almost morbid fear of the new.”
66. “Shallow understanding from people of goodwill is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.”
67. “The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.”
68. “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.”
69. “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.”
70. “The day we see the truth and cease to speak is the day we begin to die.”
71. “Science investigates; religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge, which is power; religion gives man wisdom, which is control.”
72. “A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on the installment plan.”
73. “There is nothing new about poverty. What is new is that we now have the techniques and the resources to get rid of poverty.”
74. “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
75. “The means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek.”
76. “The choice is not between violence and nonviolence but between nonviolence and nonexistence.”
77. “It is not enough to say we must not wage war. It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it.”
78. “Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.”
79. “To be a Christian without prayer is no more possible than to be alive without breathing.”
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