Inspirational Quotes by Martin Luther King, Jr.

“In benighted, incompetent Africa, I had never encountered an orphan: the American streets resembled nothing so much as one vast, howling, unprecedented orphanage. It has been vivid to me for many years that what we call a race problem here is not a race problem at all: to keep calling it that is a way of avoiding the problem. The problem is rooted in the question of how one treats one's flesh and blood, especially one's children.”

“That most men will choose women to debase is not a matter of rejoicing either for the chosen women or anybody else; brutal truth, furthermore, forces the observation, particularly if one is a black man, that this choice is by no means certain. That men have an enormous need to debase other men—and only because they are men—is a truth which history forbids us to labor. And it is absolutely certain that white men, who invented the nigger’s big black prick, are still at the mercy of this nightmare, and are still, for the most part, doomed, in one way or another, to attempt to make this prick their own: so much for the progress which the Christian world has made from that jungle in which it is their clear intention to keep black men treed forever.”

“White children, in the main, and whether they are rich or poor, grow up with a grasp of reality so feeble that they can very accurately be described as deluded. White people have managed to get through entire lifetimes in this euphoric state, but black people have not been so lucky: a black man who sees the world the way John Wayne, for example, sees it would not be an eccentric patriot, but a raving maniac.”

“The police are very sensitive about being accused of violating a suspect's constitutional rights – they are, indeed, as sensitive to any and all criticism as aging beauty queens – and would never have arrested Tony in the way that they did if they had not been certain that his accusation could never be heard.”

“Ask any Mexican, any Puerto Rican, any black man, any poor person - ask the wretched how they fare in the halls of justice, and then you will know, not whether or not the country is just, but whether or not it has any love for justice, or any concept of it. It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.”

“newborn baby is an extraordinary event; and I have never seen two babies who looked or even sounded remotely alike. Here it is, this breathing miracle who could not live an instant without you, with a skull more fragile than an egg, a miracle of eyes, legs, toenails, and (especially) lungs. It gropes in the light like a blind thing—it is, for the moment, blind—what can it make of what it sees? It’s got a little hair, which it’s going to lose, it’s got no teeth, it pees all over you, it belches, and when it’s frightened or hungry, quite without knowing what a miracle it’s accomplishing, it exercises its lungs. You watch it discover it has a hand; then it discovers it has toes. Presently, it discovers it has you, and since it has already decided it wants to live, it gives you a toothless smile when you come near it, gurgles or giggles when you pick it up, holds you tight by the thumb or the eyeball or the hair, and, having already opted against solitude, howls when you put it down.”

“Black is a tremendous spiritual condition, one of the greatest challenges anyone alive can face – this is what the blacks are saying. Nothing is easier, nor, for the guilt-ridden American, more inevitable, than to dismiss this as chauvinism in reverse. But, in this, white Americans are being – it is a part of their fate –inaccurate. To be liberated from the stigma of blackness by embracing it is to cease, forever, one's interior agreement and collaboration with the authors of one’s degradation. It abruptly reduces the white enemy to a contest merely physical, which he can win only physically. White men have killed black men for refusing to say, “Sir”: but it was the corroboration of their worth and their power that they wanted, and not the corpse, still less the staining blood. When the black man’s mind is no longer controlled but he white man’s fantasies, a new balance of what may be described as an unprecedented inequality begins to make itself felt: for the white man no longer knows who he is, whereas the black man knows them both. For if it is difficult to be released from the stigma of blackness, it is clearly at least equally difficult to surmount the delusion of whiteness. And as the black glories in his newfound color, which is his at last, and asserts, not always with the very greatest politeness, the unanswerable validity and power of his being – even in the shadow of death – the white is very often fronted and very often made afraid. He has his reasons, after all, not only for being weary of the entire concept of color, but fearful as to what may be made of this concept once it has fallen, as it were, into the wrong hands.”

“I know that when certain powerful and blatant enemies of black people are shoveled, at last, into the ground I may feel a certain pity that they spent their lives so badly, but I certainly do not mourn their passing, nor, when I hear that they are ailing, do I pray for their recovery.”

“All men, clearly, are primitive, but it can be doubted that that all men are primitive in the same way”

“life in Paris was to some extent protected by the fact that I carried a green passport. This passport proclaimed that I was a free citizen of a free country, and was not, therefore, to be treated as one of Europe’s uncivilized, black possessions. This same passport, on the other side of the ocean, underwent a sea change and proclaimed that I was not an African prince, but a domestic nigger and that no foreign government would be offended if my corpse were to be found clogging up the sewers. I had never had occasion to reflect before on the brilliance of the white strategy: blacks didn’t know each other, could barely speak to each other, and, therefore, could scarcely trust each other—and therefore, wherever we turned, we found ourselves in the white man’s territory, and at the white man’s mercy. Four hundred years in the West had certainly turned me into a Westerner—there was no way around that. But four hundred years in the West had also failed to bleach me—there was no way around that, either—and my history in the West had, for its daily effect, placed me in such mortal danger that I had fled, all the way around the corner, to France.”

“Force does not work the way its advocates seem to think it does. It does not, for example, reveal to the victim the strength of his adversary. On the contrary, it reveals the weakness, even the panic of his adversary, and this revelation invests the victim with patience. Furthermore, it is ultimately fatal to create too many victims. The victor can do nothing with these victims, for they do not belong to him, but—to the victims. They belong to the people he is fighting. The people know this, and as inexorably as the roll call—the honor roll—of victims expands, so does their will become inexorable: they resolve that these dead, their brethren, shall not have died in vain. When this point is reached, however long the battle may go on, the victor can never be the victor: on the contrary, all his energies, his entire life, are bound up in a terror he cannot articulate, a mystery he cannot read, a battle he cannot win—he has simply become the prisoner of the people he thought to cow, chain, or murder into submission.”

“The false society of men— —for earthly greatness All heavenly comforts rarefies to air.”

“Они просто нису знали како да поступају са мном, па су се понашали као неваспитани људи. У свакој претњи и у свакој похвали била је једна велика грешка. Мислили су да је моја највећа жеља да будем с друге стране зида. Нисам могао а да се не смешим кад сам видео како савесно закључавају врата за мојим размишљањима, која су изашла за њима без препрека, а у ствари су само она била опасна. Како нису могли да ухвате мене, одлучили су да казне моје тело, баш као дечаци који, кад не могу да се дочепају особе на коју су кивни, муче њеног пса. Видео сам да је држава глупа, да је плашљива као усамљена жена која се боји за своје сребрне кашике, и да не разликује пријатеље од непријатеља, и изгубио сам оно мало поштовања према њој и сажаљевао је.”

“By the blushes of Aurora and the music of Memnon, what should be man's morning work in this world?”

“Нам внушают преувеличенное понятие о важности нашей работы, а между тем, как много мы оставляем несделанным!”

“What is the price-current of an honest man and patriot to-day?”

“Устај безбрижно пре зоре и тражи пустоловине. Нека те подне затекне поред других језера, а тамо где те ноћ затекне нека ти буде кућа. Нема већих поља од ових, ни вреднијих игара од оних које се овде могу играти. Расти дивље у складу са својом природом, попут ове шаше и папрати који неће никад постати енглеска трава. Нека пуцају громови; шта ако прете уништењем фармерове летине? То није њихова порука теби. Заклони се под облак док сви беже у кола и шупе. Не допусти да ти живот буде занат, него нека буде забава. Уживај земљу, а не поседуј је.”

“But as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a bit of satisfaction from being considered an extremist. Was not Jesus an extremist in love? “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, pray for them that despitefully use you.” Was not Amos an extremist for justice—“Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.” Was not Paul an extremist for the gospel of Jesus Christ—“I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.” Was not Martin Luther an extremist—“Here I stand; I can do none other so help me God.” Was not John Bunyan an extremist—“I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience.” Was not Abraham Lincoln an extremist—“We hold these truths to be self evident that all men are created equal.” So the question is not whether we will be extremist but what kind of extremist will we be. Will we be extremists for hate or will we be extremists for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice—or will we be extremists for the cause of justice?”

“You must live within yourself, and depend upon yourself always tucked up and ready for a start, and not have many affairs.”

“I am resolved that I will not through humility become the devil’s attorney.”