Top 500 Martin Luther King Jr. Quotes (2025 Update)
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251. “Perhaps the worst sin in life is knowing right and not doing it.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

252. “We cannot walk alone. And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

253. “We must in strength and humility meet hate with love.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

254. “We must see that peace represents a sweeter music, a cosmic melody, that is far superior to the discords of war.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

255. “Freedom only comes through persistent revolt, through persistent agitation, through persistently rising up against the system of evil.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

256. “Violence brings only temporary victories; violence, by creating many more social problems than it solves, never brings permanent peace.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

257. “Mankind’s survival is dependent on man’s ability to solve the problems of racial injustice, poverty, and war; the solution of these problems is in turn dependent upon man’s squaring his moral progress with his scientific progress, and learning the practical art of living in harmony.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

258. “So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

259. “Without love, benevolence becomes egotism.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

260. “Justice is love correcting that which revolts against love.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

261. “We must come to see that the end we seek is a society at peace with itself, a society that can live with its conscience.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

262. “We are prone to judge success by the index of our salaries or the size of our automobiles rather than by the quality of our service and relationship to mankind.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

263. “The problem of racism, the problem of economic exploitation, and the problem of war are all tied together. These are the triple evils that are interrelated.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

264. “We must learn that passively to accept an unjust system is to cooperate with that system, and thereby to become a participant in its evil.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

265. “Through our scientific and technological genius we’ve made of this world a neighborhood. And now through our moral and ethical commitment we must make of it a brotherhood. We must all learn to live together as brothers-or we will all perish together as fools.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

266. “What are you doing for others?”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

267. “Our lives are not fully lived if we’re not willing to die for those we love, for what we believe.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

268. “Why is the church always a taillight rather than a headlight?”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

269. “Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

270. “Music is the best consolation for a despaired man.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

271. “Every crisis has both its dangers and its opportunities. Each can spell either salvation or doom.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

272. “We can walk through the darkest night with the radiant conviction that all things work together for the good.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

273. “Vanity asks, is it popular? Politics ask, will it work? But conscience and morality ask, is it right?”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

274. “The trailblazers in human, academic, scientific and religious freedom have always been nonconformists.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

275. “Be true to what you said on paper.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

276. “Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and establish such creative tension that a community that has consistently refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

277. “We cannot be truly Christian people so long as we flaunt the central teachings of Jesus: brotherly love and the Golden Rule.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

278. “Make a career of humanity. Commit yourself to the struggle for equal rights.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

279. “We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

280. “Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

281. “I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit together at the table of brotherhood.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

282. “I have DECIDED to love. If you are seeking the highest good, I think you can find it through love. GOD is love.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

283. “It all boils down to this: that all life is interrelated.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

284. “The most dangerous criminal may be the man gifted with reason, but with no morals.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

285. “We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

286. “Normal fear protects us; abnormal fear paralyses us. Normal fear motivates us to improve our individual and collective welfare; abnormal fear constantly poisons and distorts our inner lives. Our problem is not to be rid of fear but, rather to harness and master it.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

287. “The soft-minded man always fears change. He feels security in the status quo, and he has an almost morbid fear of the new. For him, the greatest pain is the pain of a new idea.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

288. “Law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

289. “Set yourself earnestly to discover what you are made to do, and then give yourself passionately to the doing of it.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

290. “Jazz speaks for life. This is triumphant music.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

291. “An eye for an eye leaves everybody blind.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

292. “If the church of today does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authentic ring, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

293. “Mass civil disobedience can use rage as a constructive and creative force.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

294. “Love is the supreme unifying principle of life.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

295. “We who in engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

296. “One of the great liabilities of history is that all too many people fail to remain awake through great periods of social change.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

297. “Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

298. “I refuse to accept the idea that man is mere flotsam and jetsam in the river of life, unable to influence the unfolding events which surround him.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

299. “Three hundred years of humiliation, abuse and deprivation cannot be expected to find voice in a whisper.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

300. “We must meet the forces of hate with the power of love.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.