Top 500 Martin Luther King Jr. Quotes (2025 Update)
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301. “Freedom has always been an expensive thing. History is fit testimony to the fact that freedom is rarely gained without sacrifice and self-denial.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

302. “Keep feeling the need for being first. But I want you to be the first in love. I want you to be the first in moral excellence. I want you to be the first in generosity.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

303. “I am convinced that love is the most durable power in the world. It is not an expression of impractical idealism, but of practical realism.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

304. “By its very nature, hate destroys and tears down; by its very nature, love creates and builds up.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

305. “Courage faces fear and thereby masters it.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

306. “Find a voice in a whisper.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

307. “It is not a sign of weakness, but a sign of high maturity, to rise to the level of self-criticism.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

308. “There’s something about love that builds up and is creative. There is something about hate that tears down and is destructive. So love your enemies.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

309. “Whom you would change, you must first love.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

310. “There is nothing in all the world greater than freedom. It is worth paying for; it is worth going to jail for. I would rather be a free pauper than a rich slave. I would rather die in abject poverty with my convictions than live in inordinate riches with the lack of self respect.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

311. “If you succumb to the temptation of using violence in the struggle, unborn generations will be the recipients of a long and desolate night of bitterness, and your chief legacy to the future will be an endless reign of meaningless chaos.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

312. “Courageous men never lose the zest for living even though their life situation is zestless; cowardly men, overwhelmed by the uncertainties of life, lose the will to live. We must constantly build dykes of courage to hold back the flood of fear.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

313. “Violence is anything that denies human integrity, and leads to hopelessness and helplessness.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

314. “We must face the appalling fact that we have been betrayed by both the Democratic and Republican Parties.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

315. “Ten cures for depression are to go out and do something for someone else and repeat it nine times.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

316. “Lukewarm acceptance is more bewildering than outright rejection.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

317. “The supreme task is to organize and unite people so that their anger becomes a transforming force.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

318. “You cannot defect form an insight. You cannot unsee what you have seen.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

319. “Jesus is not an impractical idealist; he is the practical realist.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

320. “A true revolution of values will see that the western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

321. “Jesus Christ was an extremist for love, truth and goodness.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

322. “Cowardice is submissive surrender to circumstances.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

323. “Is your heart right? If your heart isn’t right, fix it up today.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

324. “Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

325. “What I’m saying to you this morning is that Communism forgets that life is individual. Capitalism forgets that life is social, and the Kingdom of Brotherhood is found neither in the thesis of Communism nor the antithesis of capitalism but in a higher synthesis.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

326. “Success, recognition, and conformity are the bywords of the modern world where everyone seems to crave the anesthetizing security of being identified with the majority.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

327. “A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our present policies...”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

328. “There is nothing but a lack of social vision to prevent us from paying an adequate wage to every American citizen whether he be a hospital worker, laundry worker, maid or day laborer.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

329. “Science investigates religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge which is power religion gives man wisdom which is control.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

330. “If I wish to compose or write or pray or preach well, I must be angry. Then all the blood in my veins is stirred, and my understanding is sharpened.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

331. “Babies, we are told, are the latest news from heaven.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

332. “Many white Americans of good will have never connected bigotry with economic exploitation. They have deplored prejudice but tolerated or ignored economic injustice.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

333. “We must substitute courage for caution.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

334. “We have deluded ourselves into believing the myth that capitalism grew and prospered out of the Protestant ethic of hard work and sacrifices. Capitalism was built on the exploitation of black slaves and continues to thrive on the exploitation of the poor, both black and white, both here and abroad.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

335. “We must learn that to expect God to do everything while we do nothing is not faith but superstition.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

336. “Racial segregation must be seen for what it is, and that is an evil system, a new form of slavery covered up with certain niceties of complexity.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

337. “I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a “thing-oriented” society to a “person-oriented” society.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

338. “I would rather be a man of conviction than a man of conformity.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

339. “History is the long and tragic story of the fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

340. “We will not build a peaceful world by following a negative path. It is not enough to say we will not wage war. It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it. We must concentrate not merely on the negative expulsion of war, but on the positive affirmation of peace.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

341. “We can either walk the highroad of brotherhood or the low road of man’s inhumanity to man.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

342. “Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God’s children.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

343. “The great military leaders of the past have gone, their empires have crumbled and burned to ashes. But the empire of Jesus, built solidly and majestically on the foundation of love, is still growing.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

344. “As long as the mind is enslaved, the body can never be free.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

345. “We have a great dream. It started way back in 1776, and God grant that America will be true to her dream.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

346. “Nothing degrades a man do more than the allowed stoop so low as to hate someone.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

347. “The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward the goal of political independence, and we still creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward the gaining of a cup of coffee at a lunch counter.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

348. “Civilization and violence are antithetical concepts.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

349. “You only need a heart full of grace.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

350. “There is nothing more tragic in all the world than to know right and not to do it.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.