Martin Luther King Jr. Quotes

The same people that are with me for not going to Vietnam because I saved them and their children.The same people will give me hell if I turn to them and say, 'let's free my people now'.They're with me on one part of my beliefs about the war, that's all. Not for my freedom.

Passivity is the same as defending injustice.

You can only watch injustice go on for so long until you're compelled to say something. To speak out against it.

Some laws are wrong, and we have an obligation to speak out against those laws wherever they are.

All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.

I hate injustice, and I can't help but speak against it. But I don't want to get involved in politics.

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.

Some must speak and some must be still so that we can listen to the voices of the just and the silence of the sinners.

A man dies when he refuses to stand up for justice.

No matter how mendacious elites may be, they cannot extinguish the forces for good in the world.

If you want to keep people subjugated, the last thing you place in their hands is a Bible. There's nothing more radical, nothing more revolutionary, nothing more subversive against injustice and oppression than the Bible.

As long as the superstition that people should obey unjust laws exists, so long will slavery exist

Write on my gravestone: 'Infidel, Traitor.', infidel to every church that compromises with wrong; traitor to every government that oppresses the people.

When in the course of human development, existing institutions prove inadequate to the needs of man, when they serve merely to enslave, rob and oppress mankind, the people have the eternal right to rebel against, and overthrow, these institutions.

Take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim.

You know, my friends, there comes a time when people get tired of being trampled over by the iron feet of oppression.

When wrongs are pressed because it is believed they will be borne, resistance becomes morality.

To accept injustice or segregation passively is to say to the oppressor that his actions are morally right.

The inability of those in power to still the voices of their own consciences is the great force leading to change.

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

The man dies in all who keep silent in the face of tyranny.

The hate and scorn showered on us Negro officers by our fellow Americans convinced me that there was no sense in my dying for a world ruled by them. I made up my mind that if I got through this war I would study law and use my time fighting for men who could not strike back.

Evil prospers when good men do nothing.

Injustice can never be stood for.

I don't think I can do this anymore.