Words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Quotes from Stride Towards Freedom: The Montgomery Story
"Any religion that professes to be concerned with the souls of men and is not concerned with the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strangle them, and the social conditions that cripple them is a dry-as-dust religion. Such a religion is the kind the Marxists like to see--an opiate of the people." (p. 36)
"Any individual who submitted willingly to injustice did not really deserve more justice." (p. 38)
"True peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice." (p. 40)
"He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it." (p. 51)
"So in order to be true to one's conscience and true to God, a righteous man has no alternative but to refuse to cooperate with an evil system." (p. 51)
"The gospel deals with the whole man, not only his soul, but his body; not only his spiritual well-being, but his material well-being ... Any religion which professes to be concerned about the souls of men and is not concerned about the social and economic conditions that scar the soul, is a spiritually moribund religion only waiting for the day to be buried. It well has been said: 'A religion that ends with the individual, ends.'" (p. 91)
"True pacifism is not nonresistance to evil, but nonviolent resistance to evil. Between these two positions, there is a world of difference." (p. 98)
"How often the church has had a high blood count of creeds and an anemia of deeds!" (p. 207)
"Nonviolent resistance is not aimed against oppressors, but against oppression." (p. 214)
"With nonviolent resistance,
no individual or group need submit to any wrong,
nor need anyone resort to violence in order to right a wrong."
"Unearned suffering is redemptive.
Suffering, the nonviolent resister realizes,
has tremendous educational and transforming possibilities."
"The aftermath of nonviolence is reconciliation
and the creation of the beloved community."
"We will take direct action against injustice
without waiting for other agencies to act.
We will not obey unjust laws
or submit to unjust practices.
We will do this peacefully, openly, cheerfully
because our aim is to persuade.
We adopt the means of nonviolence
because our end is a community at peace with itself.
We will try to persuade with our words,
but if our words fail,
we will try to persuade with our acts.
We will always be willing to talk
and seek fair compromise,
but we are ready to suffer, when necessary
and even risk our lives
to become witnesses to the truth as we see it."
Text and audio of the "I Have a Dream" speech
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