Martin Luther King Jr. Quotes

Do you know why this world is as bad as it is?... It is because people think only about their own business, and won't trouble themselves to stand up for the oppressed, nor bring the wrong-doers to light... My doctrine is this, that if we see cruelty or wrong that we have the power to stop, and do nothing, we make ourselves sharers in the guilt.

What's to become of the morally sound? Left out in the cold, I suppose. We must heal the sick.

How you treat the helpless is the real test of morality. Lots of people are flunking that test big time.

Some of the best people that ever lived have been as destitute as I am; and if you are a Christian, you ought not to consider poverty a crime.

If people call me Christian, not from the standpoint of religion but from the standpoint of social vision, I declare that I am a Christian.

Suffering, if you're a Christian, suffering is a part of life. And it's not a bad thing, it is an essential thing in life... There are all different ways to suffer. One way to suffer is through lack of food and shelter and there's another way to suffer which is lack of dignity and hope and there's all sorts of ways that people suffer and it's not just tangible, it's also intangible and we have to consider both.

Christians, you and your churches don't get to be millionaires while other people have nothing at all. They're your bloody rules! Either stick to them or abandon the faith.

I have a secret passion for mercy. . . but justice is what keeps happening to people.

I don't want to put the world to rights... I just don't like people who put the world to wrongs.

Someday, somehow, I am going to do something useful, something for people. They are, most of them, so helpless, so hurt and so unhappy.

This is the duty of our generation as we enter the twenty-first century - solidarity with the weak, the persecuted, the lonely, the sick, and those in despair. It is expressed by the desire to give a noble and humanizing meaning to a community in which all members will define themselves not by their own identity but by that of others.

My sermon for us Americans would be to construct the kind of institutions of mutuality and social cooperation that don't leave 15 or 20 percent of our people falling through the cracks. We can do it. It's not like we don't know what to do. It's not like there aren't models there. It's not like this isn't being done elsewhere. It's not like we can't afford to do it. It's a question of political will and it's about our definition as a people.

Each individual Christian and every community is called to be an instrument of God for the liberation and promotion of the poor.

What can we do to nurture and support a people capable of living in freedom?

I choose the poverty of our poor people. But I am grateful to receive it (the Nobel) in the name of the hungry, the naked, the homeless, of the crippled, of the blind, of the lepers, of all those people who feel unwanted, unloved, uncared for throughout society, people that have become a burden to the society and are shunned by everyone.

There are some things concerning which we must always be maladjusted if we are to be people of good will. We must never adjust ourselves to racial segregation. We must never adjust ourselves to religious bigotry. We must never adjust ourselves to economic conditions that take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few.

While I believe in all that freedom, I also believe that no one should suffer needlessly.

I hope you will judge yourselves not on your professional accomplishments alone, but also on how well you have addressed the world's deepest inequities...on how well you treated people a world away who have nothing in common with you but your humanity.

I don't accept the term 'political rapper' because I don't give a damn about either political party. I give a damn about the people.

I've always said that liberalism is one of the most gutless choices you can make. All you have to do to be acknowledged as a good liberal is to see suffering and tell people you see it, and that will convey you have a big heart and that you care and that you're troubled.

...the true greatness of a nation is founded on principles of humanity.

For years Christians in particular have been attacked and silenced as they tried to challenge the immorality pervasive in today's society. When they tell people casual sex is wrong, they get the inevitable, "You got no right to tell me what I can or can't do. You don't get to define morality for me. It's none of your business what I do. Shut up." If they oppose sexual immorality in any form including adultery, they are maligned as sanctimonious Puritans who have not gotten with it in the twenty-first century. It's a long piece; it's well thought out.

Fighting by itself doesn't interest me anymore. I want to help people, the black people and I need any kind of media to spread my thought: God, charity, peace.

How, then,' I hear you ask, 'shall I attain my end, whether it be Christian love, socialism, or American democracy?' Your Christian love and your socialism and your American democracy are what you do each day, your manner of thinking each hour, of embracing your life companion and loving your child; they are your attitude of social responsibility towards your work, and your determination not to become like the crushers of life you so hate.

I don't believe in charity. I believe in solidarity. Charity is so vertical. It goes from the top to the bottom. Solidarity is horizontal. It respects the other person. I have a lot to learn from other people.