Martin Luther King Jr. Quotes

I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world.

War is God's way of teaching Americans geography.

There are some patriotic citizens who sincerely hope that America will win the war - but they also hope that Russia will lose it; and there are some who hope that America will win the war, but that England will lose it; and there are some who hope that America will win the war, but that Roosevelt will lose it.

My job is not to represent the world. My job is to represent the United States of America.

It is heroic to prepare for war with a tyrant power. Patriots will always win the admiration of mankind for daring to meet the bloodshed of battle for their country's liberty. But the patriot who is willing to go to that sacrifice will be the first to condemn the aimless and secret shedding of blood in time of peace.

I am the living death, a Memorial Day on wheels. I am your Yankee Doodle Dandy, your John Wayne come home, your Fourth of July firecracker exploding in the grave.

A country grows in history not only because of the heroism of its troops on the field of battle, it grows also when it turns to justice and to right for the conservation of its interests.

How strange it is that murder has the sanction of law in one and only one of the human relationships, and that is the most important of all, that of nation to nation.

Sometimes I think war is God's way of teaching us geography.

War means blind obedience, unthinking stupidity, brutish callousness, wanton destruction, and irresponsible murder.

I also argued before the war that the administration was underestimating Arab nationalism and Iraqi nationalism, that it was not going to be as easy to rule Iraq as they thought.

In Ecuador, if I go after an Ecuadoran, I'm in trouble; if I go after a Costa Rican, I'm a hero.

At public ceremonies, moreover, mothers whose sons were conscripted for the business of fighting were lined up and “invited” to kiss the cannon already used or to be used in the execution of Italy’s imperial program in Ethiopia.

Restrain our citizens from embarking individually in a war in which their country takes no part …. How desirable, then, must it be in a Government like ours to see its citizens adopt individually the views, the interests, and the conduct which their country should pursue, divesting themselves of those passions and partialities which tend to lessen useful friendships and to embarrass and embroil us in the calamitous scenes of Europe.

Workers! Citizens! The downfall of the Fatherland is imminent! Save it! It is not being threatened from without, but from within: By the Spartacist Group. Strike its leader dead! Kill Liebknecht! You will then have peace, work and bread! Signed: Soldiers from the Front

You believe you are dying for the fatherland—you die for some industrialist.

For every other war the government put out propaganda posters. Our government tells us to go shopping and see Cats again.

Nationalism ... is like cheap alcohol. First it makes you drunk, then it makes you blind, then it kills you.

IT doesn’t matter what’s the cause, What wrong they say we’re righting, A curse for treaties, bonds and laws, When we’re to do the fighting!

No sir, anybody who went out and got into the front line trenches to fight for liberty was a goddamn fool and the guy who got him there was a liar.

War is no longer made by simply analyzed economic forces if it ever was. War is made or planned now by individual men, demagogues and dictators who play on the patriotism of their people to mislead them into a belief in the great fallacy of war when all their vaunted reforms have failed to satisfy the people they misrule.

There are no people in the world who are so slow to develop hostile feelings against a foreign country as the Americans, and no people who, once estranged, are more difficult to win back.

There is now all this patriotic indignation about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and Japanese expansionism in Asia. Yet not a word about American and European expansionism in the same area.... We must make a start. We must renounce war as an instrument of policy.... Even as I speak to you I may be guilty of what some men call treason.... You young men should refuse to take up arms. Young women tear down the patriotic posters. And all of you — young and old — put away your flags.

My message was one of death for young men. How odd it is to applaud that.

To make a people great it is necessary to send them to battle even if you have to kick them in the ass.