Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?, 1967.
Nonviolent action, the Negro saw, was the way to supplement, not replace, the progress of change. It was the way to divest himself of passivity without arraying himself in vindictive force.
Martin Luther King, Jr., Why We Can't Wait, 1964.
If a man hasn't discovered something that he will die for, he isn't fit to live.
Martin Luther King, Jr., speech, Detroit, Michigan, June 23, 1963.
To be a Negro in America is to hope against hope.
Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, 1967.
A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.
Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, 1967.
having your legs cut off, and then being condemned for being a cripple. It means seeing your mother and father spiritually murdered by the slings and arrows of daily exploitation, and then being hated for being an orphan.
Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, 1967.
Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam.
I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor in America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. I
speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours.
Martin Luther King, Jr., The Trumpet of Conscience, 1967..