Martin Luther King Jr. Quotes

It's soul force that removed the English from India. It's soul force that brought down the Berlin Wall. It's soul force that gave life to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s struggle for civil rights.

When the Negro finds the courage to be free, he faces dogs and guns and clubs and fire hoses totally unafraid, and the white men with those dogs, guns, clubs and fire hoses see that the Negro they have traditionally called "boy" has become a man.

Passive resistance is the resistance which does not resist.

I remember back in the 1960s - late '50s, really - reading a comic book called 'Martin Luther King Jr. and the Montgomery Story.' Fourteen pages. It sold for 10 cents. And this little book inspired me to attend non-violence workshops, to study about Gandhi, about Thoreau, to study Martin Luther King, Jr., to study civil disobedience.

I think if people really read Martin Luther King, Jr., then they would begin to understand what he really represented. The philosophy that he developed, of course, he was greatly influenced by Gandhi and Jesus Christ.

Nonviolence or soul force does not need physical aids for its propagation of effect.

The civil rights movement didn't begin in Montgomery and it didn't end in the 1960s. It continues on to this very minute.

It will be hard to find a parallel in history in which unarmed people have represented the urge for freedom, turning their armlessness into the central means for deliverance.

Gandhi was inevitable. If humanity is to progress, Gandhi is inescapable. He lived, thought and acted, inspired by the vision of humanity evolving toward a world of peace and harmony. We may ignore Gandhi at our own risk.

Martin Luther King really was a safety valve for white people. Any time it appeared that the black community was on the verge of really doing what we ought to do based on having been attacked, they put Martin Luther King on television. He was always saying, "We must use nonviolence. We must overcome hate with love." White people loved that. That's why they gave him a Nobel Prize. But when Martin Luther King started condemning the Vietnam War, that's when white people turned against him.

It is our hope that when people read "March" - Book One, Book Two, and Book Three - that they will understand that another generation of people, especially young people, were deeply inspired by the work of Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr. and many others.

Disobedience to be civil has to be open and nonviolent.

The Civil Rights movement should thank God for Bull Connor. He's helped it as much as Abraham Lincoln.

If humanity is to progress, Gandhi is inescapable.

Gandhi once declared that it was his wife who unwittingly taught him the effectiveness of nonviolence. Who better than women should know that battles can be won without resort to physical strength? Who better than we should know all the power that resides in noncooperation?

The intellectual and moral satisfaction that I failed to gain from the utilitarianism of Bentham and Mill, the revolutionary methods of Marx and Lenin, the social contract theory of Hobbes, the "back to nature" optimism of Rousseau, and the superman philosophy of Nietzsche, I found in the nonviolent resistance philosophy of Gandhi. I came to feel that this was the only morally and practically sound method open to oppressed people in their struggle for freedom.

There is nothing but nonviolence to fall back upon for retaining our freedom, even as we had to do for gaining it.

I firmly believe that the Gandhian philosophy of nonviolent resistance is the only logical and moral approach to the solution of the race problem in the United States.

I have repeatedly stated that satyagraha never fails and that one perfect satyagrahi is enough to vindicate Truth.

Satyagraha as conceived by me is a science in the making.

By nonviolent resistance, the Negro can also enlist all men of good will in his struggle for equality.

Martin Luther King has made the Negro in America unnatural.

Satyagraha is a purely spiritual weapon.

You are resisting, but you've come to see that tactically as well as morally, it is better to be nonviolent.If one would, didn't want to deal with the moral questions, it would just be impractical for the Negro to talk about making his struggle a violent one.