Not everybody can be famous but everybody can be great, because greatness is determined by service.

We are faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words ‘Too...

We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.

And when you discover what you will be in your life, set out to do it as if God Almighty called you at this particular moment in history to do it. Don’t just set out...

This Revolution is genuine because it was born from the same womb that always gives birth to massive social upheavals – the womb of intolerable conditions and unendurable situations.

…The straitjackets of race prejudice and discrimination do not wear only southern labels. The subtle, psychological technique of the North has approached in its ugliness and victimization of the Negro the outright terror and open...

There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love.

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.

I became convinced that noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good.

God is able to give you the power to endure that which cannot be changed… Why be anxious? Come what may, God is able.

And one day we must ask the question, “Why are there forty million poor people in America?” And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a...

Faith is taking the first step even when you can’t see the whole staircase.

Free at last, Free at last, Thank God almighty we are free at last.

Those who love peace must learn to organize as effectively as those who love war.

No work is insignificant. All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.

Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.

We can all get more together than we can apart. And this is the way we gain power. Power is the ability to achieve purpose, power is the ability to effect change, and we need...

On some positions, cowardice asks the question, is it expedient? And then expedience comes along and asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? Conscience asks the question, is it...

Injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere. Anyone who lives inside the US can never be considered an outsider anywhere in the country

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...

I always contended that we as a race must not seek to rise from a position of disadvantage to one of advantage, but to create a moral balance in society where democracy and brotherhood would...

Even today there still exists in the South–and in certain areas of the North–the license that our society allows to unjust officials who implement their authority in the name of justice to practice injustice against...

Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy to a friend.

In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.

I said to my children, ‘I’m going to work and do everything that I can do to see that you get a good education. I don’t ever want you to forget that there are millions...

Admitting the weighty problems and staggering disappointments, Christianity affirms that God is able to give us the power to meet them. He is able to give us inner equilibrium to stand tall amid the trials...

What I’m saying to you this morning is that Communism forgets that life is individual. Capitalism forgets that life is social, and the Kingdom of Brotherhood is found neither in the thesis of Communism nor...

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.

The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.

Three hundred years of humiliation, abuse and deprivation cannot be expected to find voice in a whisper.

The question is not if we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. The nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.

[If] a man doesn’t have a job or an income, he has neither life nor liberty nor the possibility for the pursuit of happiness. He merely exists.

Love or perish.” Hate is too great a burden to bear.

The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but...

There comes a time when people get tired of being trampled over by the iron feet of oppression.

True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.

Only God is able. It is faith in Him that we must rediscover. With this faith we can transform bleak and desolate valleys into sunlit paths of joy and bring new light into the dark...

The words ‘bad timing’ came to be ghosts haunting our every move in Birmingham. Yet people who used this argument were ignorant of the background of our planning…they did not realize that it was ridiculous...

Now there is a final reason I think that Jesus says, “Love your enemies.” It is this: that love has within it a redemptive power. And there is a power there that eventually transforms individuals....

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.

Science investigates; religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge, which is power; religion gives man wisdom, which is control. Science deals mainly with facts; religion deals mainly with values. The two are not rivals.

We did not hesitate to call our movement an army. But it was a special army, with no supplies but its sincerity, no uniform but its determination, no arsenal except its faith, no currency but...

[Nonviolence] is directed against forces of evil rather than against persons who happen to be doing the evil. It is evil that the nonviolent resister seeks to defeat, not the persons victimized by evil.

All labor has dignity.

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.

No person has the right to rain on your dreams.

Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.

We all too often have socialism for the rich and rugged free market capitalism for the poor.

In our glorious fight for civil rights, we must guard against being fooled by false slogans, such as ‘right-to-work.’ It provides no ‘rights’ and no ‘works.’ Its purpose is to destroy labor unions and the...

Let no man pull you so low as to hate him.