21 Martin Luther King Quotes that moved the World

Martin Luther King, Jr.  lived from January 15, 1929 to April 4, 1968.

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is a United States national holiday set aside on the third Monday in January of every year to celebrate the birthday of the civil rights icon who fought for equality and justice in a segregated America. Many (including world-class leaders) have drawn inspiration from the words of Dr Martin Luther King. His quotes remain potent reminders of  the need for freedom and of the importance of everybody playing a role in preserving the dignity of others.

Image of Dr Martin Luther King at the King Center in Atlanta

1- “If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.”

2- “Darkness is only driven out with light, not more darkness.”

3- “He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.”

4- “Love is the only cement that can hold this broken community together. When I am commanded to love, I am commanded to restore community, to resist injustice, and to meet the needs of my brothers.”

5- “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”

6- “We shall have to repent in this generation , not so much for the evil deeds of the wicked people, but for the appalling silence of the good people.”

7- “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.”

8- “Discrimination is a hellhound that gnaws at Negroes in every waking moment of their lives to remind them that the lie of their inferiority is accepted as truth in the society dominating them.”

9- “In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”

10- “Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.”

11- “He who is devoid of the power to forgive, is devoid of the power to love.”

12- “The Negro’s great stumbling block in the drive toward freedom is not the White Citizens Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice.”

Martin Luther King, Jr Quotes

(Image courtesy @TheKingCenter, Twitter)

13- “I submit to you that if a man hasn’t discovered something he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.”

14- “Let us all hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away, and that in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty.”

15- “Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.”

16- “Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man’s sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true.”

17- “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.”

18- “A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on an installment plan.”

19- “If the cruelties of slavery could not stop us, the opposition we now face will surely fail. Because the goal of America is freedom, abused and scorned tho’ we may be, our destiny is tied up with America’s destiny.”

20- “The hope of a secure and livable world lies with disciplined nonconformists who are dedicated to justice, peace and brotherhood.”

21- “Free at last; free at last; thank God Almighty we are free at last.”

Martin Kuther King day

Director Ava DeVernay and Common stop for an interview during a red carpet screening of the movie Selma as part of Martin Luther King Day celebrations in Selma, Ala., Sunday, Jan. 18, 2015. DeVernay’s film depicted the events surrounding Dr. Kings leadership and the march from Selma to Montgomery that led to the Voting Rights Acts passage in Congress. (AP Photo/AL.com, Frank Couch)

 

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