Martin Luther King Jr. Quotes

Don't accept the old order. Get rid of it.

The revolution is a torrent which sweeps aside those who resist it.

I can't let time move on without fighting tooth and nail and hopefully being a part of a revolution that is positive.

Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing grooves of change.

You know, I'm not a revolutionary.

Political and social change is always a stagger-step process. One step forward, two steps back. They want you to give up.

If you compromise in any kind of movement or any kind of wave of revolution, if you sort of play the game, things are gonna change far more slowly than you need them to.

You see, revolution sounds like something that happens, like turning on the light switch, but actually it's moving a large obstacle, and a lot of folks' efforts to push it in one direction or the other have to combine.

There is no force so powerful as an idea whose time has come.

Real change is always violent, but it may hurt a lot less than what's in place before the violence occurs.

Apostles of Freedom are ever idolized when dead, but crucified when living.

Be not deceived. Revolutions do not go backward.

Something is stirring in the hearts and minds of the people.

If the world is turning, even the church can’t stop it; if it isn’t turning, nobody can go out and make it turn.

One of the reasons that change takes place is that the people who produce it believe change can take place.

… all change in history, all advance, comes from the nonconformists. If there had been no trouble-makers, no Dissenters, we should still be living in caves.

Heroism means going out of bounds. In this world things must go out of bounds from time to time... No one can desire that the world continue to muddle along in every respect in the groove into which imperfect laws and even more imperfect behavior have pushed it. Without heroic intervention no Council of Nicaea, no dethronement of the Merovingians, no conquest of England, no Reformation, no revolt of the Netherlands, no free America. The thing that counts is who intervenes, how and in the name of what.

The right of the revolution is the right of the future.

You can never squash something and assume it's not going to come back in some fashion. It's going to bubble up until it explodes. Society evolves to find a better way.

If things aren't working for us, it is our duty to rise up.

Change always seems impossible until it's inevitable.

It is not necessary to wait until all conditions for making revolution exist; the insurrection can create them.

Keep this straight in your head: we are not fighting an alien invasion - we're leading a revolution. And today the battle begins.

Tomorrow the revolution will already 'raise itself with a rattle' and announce with fanfare, to your terror: I was, I am, I will be!

Revolution begins with one step