Martin Luther King Jr. Quotes

You see few people here in America who really care very much about living a Christian life in a democratic world.

We have, in fact, two kinds of morality side by side; one which we preach but do not practice, and another which we practice but seldom preach.

Faith without works is dead.

The unhealthy gap between what we preach in America and what we often practice creates a moral dry rot that eats at the very foundation of our democratic ideals and values.

The truth is, our civilization is not Christian; it is a tragic compound of great ideal and fearful practice, of loving charity and fearful clutching of possessions.

Do you call yourselves Christians? Does then the religion of Him whom you call your Savior inspire your spirit, and guide your practices? Surely not. It is recorded of him that a bruised reed he never broke. Cease, then, to call yourselves Christians, lest you declare to the world your hypocrisy. Cease, too, to call other nations savage, when you are tenfold more the children of cruelty than they.

If a man cannot be a Christian in the place where he is, he cannot be a Christian anywhere.

Christ would not vote for Barack Obama, because Barack Obama has voted to behave in a way that is inconceivable for Christ to have behaved

Benjamin Disraeli might be an excellent Christian but he is assuredly a detestable pagan.

Who takes the blame: the leader who talks of poverty but lives in luxury, or the poor who choose a leader of that type?

Saying is one thing and doing is another.

The Spanish Inquisition sought to avoid direct responsibility for the burning of heretics by handing them over to the secular arm; to burn them itself, it piously explained, would be wholly inconsistent with its Christian principles. Few of us would allow the Inquisition thus easily to wipe its hands clean of bloodshed; it knew quite well what would happen. Equally, where the technological application of scientific discoveries is clear and obvious — as when a scientist works on nerve gases — he cannot properly claim that such applications are "none of his business," merely on the ground that it is the military forces, not scientists, who use the gases to disable or kill.

...the common sense of Christendom has always prescribed for national policy principles diametrically opposed to those that are laid down in the Sermon on the Mount.

It was easy to be moral when that was the way you felt anyway. The hard bit about morality was making yourself feel the opposite of what you really felt.

It is curious that Christianity, which is idealism, is sturdily defended by the brokers, and steadily attacked by the idealists.

Some men will not shave on Sunday, and yet they spend all the week in shaving their fellow-men; and many folks think it very wicked to black their boots on Sunday morning, yet they do not hesitate to black their neighbor's reputation on week-days.

How could you do nothing to him, if you fought so hard?” she asked. “I’m lust and he’s wrath!” he yelled. “I’m a lover, he’s a fighter!” Virtue - A Fairy Tale

I felt it was my duty to praise all of God's works with fervent enthusiasm. At the same time I killed flies in my house in a spirit of hatred, exasperation and contempt. My praise to God for all his works was dishonest, the act of killing the fly was honest.

Almost all the civil liberty now enjoyed in the world owes its origin to the principles of the christian religion.

But it has often happened that I have found the most seductive depictions of sin in the pages of those very men of incorruptible virtue who condemned their spell and their effects.

Catholicism is a really mean religion, and it's incredibly hypocritical. But it plays a role in my life 'cause you can't really get a lot of things out of your head, such as what Jesus Christ looks like and that divorce is a horrible thing.

The opposite of Christianity is not atheism, but idolatry.

The founder of Crunk Feminists is a Christian. If you claim to be a Christian, but then you attack somebody for saying you should approach a problem with love, you're not being a true Christian.

Few love to hear the sins they love to act.

It's the old American Double Standard, ya know: Say one thing, do somethin' different. And of course this country is founded on the double standard. That's our history. We were founded on a very basic double standard: This country was founded by slave owners who wanted to be free.