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America be true to yourself.
Martin Luther King Jr. > Quotes
“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”
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"Faith is taking the first step even when you can't see the whole staircase.”
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“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
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“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”
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"Let no man pull you so low as to hate him.”
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“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.”
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"I have decided to stick to love...Hate is too great a burden to bear.”
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"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.”
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“Everybody can be great...because anybody can serve.
You don't have to have a college degree to serve.
You don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve.
You only need a heart full of grace.
A soul generated by love.”
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"Those who are not looking for happiness are the most likely to find it, because those who are searching forget that the surest way to be happy is to seek happiness for others.”
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"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
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“If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as a Michaelangelo 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.”
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"No one really knows why they are alive until they know what they'd die for.”
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"Forgiveness is not an occasional act, it is a constant attitude.”
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“Wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.”
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“There comes a time when silence is betrayal.”
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“Not only will we have to repent for the sins of bad people; but we also will have to repent for the appalling silence of good people.”
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"Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal.”
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“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 right?
There comes a time when one must take the position that is neither safe nor politic nor popular, but he must do it because conscience tells him it is right.”
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“the time is always right to do the right thing”
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“We must live together as brothers or perish together as fools.”
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“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.”
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"The choice is not between violence and nonviolence but between nonviolence and nonexistence.”
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“There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love.”
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“A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.”
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“Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy to a friend."
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“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.
Just keep being friendly to that person.
Just keep loving them, and they can’t stand it too long.
Oh, they react in many ways in the beginning.
They react with guilt feelings, and sometimes they’ll hate you a little more at that transition period, but just keep loving them.
And by the power of your love they will break down under the load.
That’s love, you see.
It is redemptive, and this is why Jesus says love.
There’s something about love that builds up and is creative.
There is something about hate that tears down and is destructive.
So love your enemies.
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“As my sufferings mounted I soon realized that there were two ways in which I could respond to my situation -- either to react with bitterness or seek to transform the suffering into a creative force.
I decided to follow the latter course.”
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“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.”
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“Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.”
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“One of the great liabilities of history is that all too many people fail to remain awake through great periods of social change.
Every society has its protectors of status quo and its fraternities of the indifferent who are notorious for sleeping through revolutions.
Today, our very survival depends on our ability to stay awake, to adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant and to face the challenge of change.”
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“We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society.
When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”
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“The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was: 'If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?'
But...the good Samaritan reversed the question: 'If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?”
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“Another way that you love your enemy is this: When the opportunity presents itself for you to defeat your enemy, that is the time which you must not do it.
There will come a time, in many instances, when the person who hates you most, the person who has misused you most, the person who has gossiped about you most, the person who has spread false rumors about you most, there will come a time when you will have an opportunity to defeat that person.
It might be in terms of a recommendation for a job; it might be in terms of helping that person to make some move in life.
That’s the time you must do it. That is the meaning of love.
In the final analysis, love is not this sentimental something that we talk about.
It’s not merely an emotional something. Love is creative, understanding goodwill for all men.
It is the refusal to defeat any individual.
When you rise to the level of love, of its great beauty and power, you seek only to defeat evil systems.
Individuals who happen to be caught up in that system, you love, but you seek to defeat the system.”
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“True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. ”
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Martin Luther King Jr. Author profile
born January 15, 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia, The United States
diedApril 04, 1968
gendermale
website
http://www.thekingcenter.org/genreNonfiction, Politics, Religion & Spirituality
influencesMahatma Gandhi, Howard Thurman
About this author edit data
Martin Luther King, Jr. was one of the pivotal leaders of the American civil rights movement.
King was a Baptist minister, one of the few leadership roles available to black men at the time.
He became a civil rights activist early in his career. He led the Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955–1956) and helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (1957), serving as its first president.
His efforts led to the 1963 March on Washington, where King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech.
Here he raised public consciousness of the civil rights movement and established himself as one of the greatest orators in U.S. history.
In 1964, King became the youngest person to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to end segregation and racial...more
* ― Martin Luther King Jr., I Have a
Dream: Writings and Speeches That Changed the World
Read more of Dr. King's quotes here:
http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/23924.Martin_Luther_King_Jr_“We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today.
We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there "is" such a thing as being too late.
This is no time for apathy or complacency.
This is a time for vigorous and postive action.”
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“Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic.
Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.”
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“A lie cannot live.”
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“Lightning makes no sound until it strikes.”
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“Those who love peace must learn to organize as effectively as those who love war.”
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“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.”
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“We may have all come on different ships, but we're in the same boat now.”
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“The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.”
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“The Arc of the Moral Universe Is Long, but It Bends Toward Justice”
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“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.”
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“One's dignity may be assaulted, vandalized, cruelly mocked, but it an never be taken away unless it is surrendered.”
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“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.”
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“The greatest purveyor of violence in the world : My own Government, I can not be Silent.”
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“There is nothing more majestic than the determined courage of individuals willing to suffer and sacrifice for their freedom and dignity.”
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“Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable... Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.”
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“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 Late’.”
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“Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.”
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“Not everybody can be famous but everybody can be great, because greatness is determined by service.”
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“We must remember that intelligence is not enough.
Intelligence plus character-that is the goal of true education.
The complete education gives one not only power of concentration, but worthy objectives upon which to concentrate. ”
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“I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed, without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today – my own government.”
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“If I cannot do great things, I can do small things in a great way”
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“True peace is not merely the absence of tension: it is the presence of justice.”
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“Be The Peace You Wish To See In The World!”
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“A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.”
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“The saving of our world from pending doom will come, not through the complacent adjustment of the conforming majority, but through the creative maladjustment of a nonconforming minority.”
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“The end of life is not to be happy, nor to achieve pleasure and avoid pain, but to do the will of God, come what may.”
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“I am what I am because of who we all are.”
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“Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal.”
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“It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tired into a single garment of destiny.
Whatever affects one destiny, affects all indirectly.”
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“You may be 38 years old, as I happen to be.
And one day, some great opportunity stands before you and calls you to stand up for some great principle, some great issue, some great cause.
And you refuse to do it because you are afraid….
You refuse to do it because you want to live longer….
You’re afraid that you will lose your job, or you are afraid that you will be criticized or that you will lose your popularity, or you’re afraid that somebody will stab you, or shoot at you or bomb your house; so you refuse to take the stand.
Well, you may go on and live until you are 90, but you’re just as dead at 38 as you would be at 90.
And the cessation of breathing in your life is but the belated announcement of an earlier death of the spirit.”
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“We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline.
We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence.”
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“On the one hand we are called to play the good Samaritan on life's roadside; but that will be only an initial act.
One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway.
True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial.
It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.
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“The hope of a secure and livable world lies with disciplined nonconformists who are dedicated to justice, peace and brotherhood.”
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“In some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty. ”
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“Everything that we see is a shadow cast by that which we do not see.”
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"The potential beauty of human life is constantly made ugly by man's ever-recurring song of retaliation.”
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"Babies, we are told, are the latest news from heaven.”
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“But life at its best is a creative synthesis of opposites in fruitful harmony.”
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“We must substitute courage for caution.”
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“Use me, God. Show me how to take who I am, who I want to be, and what I can do, and use it for a purpose greater than myself.”
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“Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time: the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence.
Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation.
The foundation of such a method is love.”
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“When we look at modern man, we