Famous Quotes

Quotes by Martin Luther King Jr

• Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.
• Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal.
• Pity may represent little more than the impersonal concern which prompts the mailing of a check, but true sympathy is the personal concern which demands the giving of one's soul.
• Property is intended to serve life, and no matter how much we surround it with rights and respect, it has no personal being. It is part of the earth man walks on. It is not man.
• 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. Nothing pains some people more than having to think.
• Science investigates religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge which is power religion gives man wisdom which is control.
• Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.
• Take the first step in faith. You don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.
• That old law about 'an eye for an eye' leaves everybody blind. The time is always right to do the right thing.
• 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.
• 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?'
• 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.
• The hope of a secure and livable world lies with disciplined nonconformists who are dedicated to justice, peace and brotherhood.
• The hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who remain neutral in times of great moral conflict.
• The means by which we live have outdistanced the ends for which we live. Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.
• The quality, not the longevity, of one's life is what is important.
• The sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality.
• The time is always right to do what is right.
• The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.
• There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love.
• There is nothing more tragic than to find an individual bogged down in the length of life, devoid of breadth.
• War is a poor chisel to carve out tomorrow.
• We are not makers of history. We are made by history.
• We have guided missiles and misguided men.
• We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.
• We must build dikes of courage to hold back the flood of fear.
• We must concentrate not merely on the negative expulsion of war but the postive affirmation of peace.
• 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. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.
• We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.
• We must use time creatively.
• We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people.
• Whatever your life's work is, do it well. A man should do his job so well that the living, the dead, and the unborn could do it no better.