Martin Luther King Jr. Quotes

I am the dream and the hope of the slave

Dr. King gave the "I have a dream" speech, not the "I have a plan" speech.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a desert state, sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream! To be free at last! Free at last! Free at last. And if a man has nothing to die for, Then his life is worth nothing.

To this wonderful page in our country's history another more glorious still will be added, and the slave shall show at last to his free brothers a sharpened sword forged from the links of his fetters.

In a world of injustice there's going to be dreams of justice.

The struggle for freedom and justice is now.

I have a dream today!

To end slavery, you must overcome the mental and physical inertia of the masses and quicken their intelligence and creative faculty.

Dear young people, do not give up your dreams of a more just world!

For humanity has moved forward to an era when wrong and slavery are being displaced, and reason and justice are being recognized as the rule of life.

Remember, we are not fighting for the freedom of the Negro alone, but for the freedom of the human spirit a larger freedom that encompasses all mankind.

I'm still convinced. We all fight for freedom, but the foundation of freedom is equality and justice. And we are all on the road.

Freedom is a hard-bought thing and millions are in chains, but they strain toward the new day drawing near.

God gave us Lincoln and Liberty, let us fight for both.

For as long as I can remember, I've always been interested in issues of social justice, political freedom, and civil rights.

This liberty will look easy by and by when nobody dies to get it.

The arc of American history almost inevitably moves toward freedom. Whether it's Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation, the expansion of women's rights or, now, gay rights, I think there is an almost-inevitable march toward greater civil liberties.

Proclaim liberty throughout the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.

In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free—honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best, hope on earth.

The battle of freedom is to be fought out on principle.

When liberty is on the march, we ought to be with it.

This is not a question of expediency, but of right. In antebellum days the proposition was not, “Are the blacks good enough to be free?” but, “Have they the right?” So today the question is not, “Will outrages result from freeing humanity?” but, “Has it the right to life, the means of life, the opportunities of happiness?”

The much abused “shopkeepers” have abolished slavery and serfdom, made woman the companion of man with equal rights, proclaimed equality before the law and freedom of thought and opinion, declared war on war, abolished torture, and mitigated the cruelty of punishment. What cultural force can boast of similar achievements?

Tell them about the dream, Martin—the dream.