Martin Luther King Jr. Quotes

MLK, Jr. taught me how to say no to segregation, and I can hear him saying now... when you straighten up your back, no man can ride you. He said stand up straight and say no to racial discrimination.

Power cedes nothing without a demand.

Bring on your tear gas, bring on your grenades, your new supplies of Mace, your state troopers and even your national guards. But let the record show we ain't going to be turned around.

Power is never so overwhelming that there's no room for resistance.

So we must stand together to resist, for we will get what we can take - just that and no more.

How many of you are willing to go to jail for freedom?

Oppression costs the oppressor too much if the oppressed stand up and protest.

I was part of the peace movement and part of the civil rights movement. You know what we heard? 'The majority of people don't support you.'

If I were a Negro, I'd be fighting, as Martin Luther King fought, for human recognition and justice. I'd rather go down with my flag flying. If you're weak or crippled, or you can't speak out or fight back in some way, then people don't hesitate to treat you badly.

Movements don't die, because struggle doesn't die.

Even when folks are hitting you over the head, you can't stop marching. Even when they're turning the hoses on you, you can't stop.

The essence of Ferguson is the spirit of the people, and I'm so happy to see the spirit because I haven't seen it like that since the Civil Rights Movement.

Gandhi protested against restrictive policies. So did 'Guru.'

We have to fight for what's right the same way the brothers and sisters that came before us did. The ultimate example, and there are many others, was The Stonewall Inn. They were pushed until they could take no more.

If there is no struggle, there is no progress....This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.

it is immoral for powerless people to accept this powerlessness. They may not succeed in getting power but they can fight for it, and if enough fight for it, it makes it very difficult for the people with the big sticks.

When that white driver stepped back toward us, when he waved his hand and ordered us up and out of our seats, I felt a determination cover my body like a quilt on a winter night.

Lost rights are never regained by appeals to the conscience of the usurpers, but by relentless struggle....goa ts are used for sacrificial offerings and not lions.

The only way I can pay back for what fate and society have handed me is to try, in minor totally useless ways, to make an angry sound against injustice.

All over this world people are standing up for freedom.

Let's keep refusing to accept the world as it is and insisting on building the world we dream of. Don't let the haters have the last word.

One thing of the many things that I know about Jesse Jackson, he is persistent.

I grew up in the southern United States in a city which at that time during the late '40's and early '50's was the most segregated city in the country, and in a sense learning how to oppose the status quo was a question of survival.

Since being in India, I am more convinced than ever before that the method of nonviolent resistance is the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for justice and human dignity.

I'm not sure I'm trying to communicate a message. I'm just trying to be part of the movement away from the unacceptable present.