Martin Luther King Jr. Quotes

People are dying in vain because this country isn't holding their end of the bargain up as far as, you know, giving freedom and justice and liberty to everybody.

To deny people of their human rights is to challenge their very humanity. To impose on them a wretched life of huger and deprivation is to dehumanize them. But such has been the terrible fate of all black persons in our country under the system of apartheid.

Throughout my years championing for civil rights, analyzing politics and advocating on behalf of the voiceless, I am disturbed the most when harmless children suffer because of politics or detrimental policies.

Let's leave beside them in another pile all the injustices which exist in the northern state.

For some reason, I seem to be bothered whenever I see acts of injustice and assaults on people's civil liberties. I imagine what I write in the future will follow in that vein. Whether it's fiction or non-fiction.

Wrong people are wrong because they use their freedom to deny it to others.

The rights of some must not be enjoyed by denying the rights of others. Neither can we permit states' rights at the expense of human rights.

Fundamental violations of human rights always lead to people feeling less and less human.

The government has a history of not treating people fairly, from the internment of Japanese Americans in World War II to African-Americans in the Civil Rights era.

America is a dirty rag if it will not protect all of its citizens.

A riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it that America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last few years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice, equality and humanity. And so in a real sense our nation’s summers of riots are caused by our nation’s winters of delay. And as long as America postpones justice, we stand in the position of having these recurrences of violence and riots over and over again. Social justice and progress are the absolute guarantors of riot prevention.

…Anything less than full equality is not enough. If we compromise on that principle our soul is dead

Segregation is evil; there is no pattern of life which can dehumanize men as can the way of segregation.

For years now I have heard the word “Wait”. It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This “Wait” has almost always meant “Never”.

One hundred years of delay have passed since President Lincoln freed the slaves, yet their heirs, their grandsons, are not fully free. They are not yet freed from the bonds of injustice. They are not yet freed from social and economic oppression. And this nation, for all its hopes and all its boasts, will not be fully free until all its citizens are free.

The arguments given by my predecessors in support of the ban on same sex marriage are the same arguments that were given to ban interracial marriage.

I've been in revolt for years against ignominy, against injustice, against inequality, against immorality, against the exploitation of human beings.

There was a time that human rights was not even an issue in this country. Then prisoners' rights became an issue.

There's something not right with a person's soul when they judge another human being to be less adequate because of their gender or skin color.

The oppression of a majority is detestable and odious; the oppression of a minority is only by one degree less detestable and odious.

By a divine paradox, wherever there is one slave there are two

[As a child] I was very interested in books that detailed injustice and how people who are underdogs were mistreated throughout history.

Any delay in action protecting constitutional rights is justice denied.

We are not satisfied and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.

Popery and Slavery, like two sisters, go hand in hand, sometimes one goes first. Sometimes the other, in a door, but the other is always following close at hand.