Mlk Jr Quotes

In the end we will remember not the words of our enemies...but the silence of our friends. - Martin Luther King, Jr.

For all of the pedestals MLK is now put on, far above the reach of ordinary black Americans, Martin was in his life viewed as the most dangerous man in America.

In our glorious fight for civil rights, we must guard against being fooled by false slogans, such as 'right-to-work.' It provides no 'rights' and no 'works.' Its purpose is to destroy labor unions and the freedom of collective bargaining…. We demand this fraud be stopped.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream was a manifestation of hope that humanity might one day get out of its own way by finding the courage to realize that love and nonviolence are not indicators of weakness but gifts of significant strength.

I am convinced that men hate each other because they fear each other. They fear each other because they don’t know each other, and they don’t know each other because they don’t communicate with each other, and they don’t communicate with each other because they are separated from each other

Justice denied anywhere diminishes justice everywhere.

Songs are the soul of movement! - MLK Jr.

We have to stand up for what is right-- work, march, struggle for what is right-- but we must stay vigilant that it is for the good of all

Age in just a number. It carries no weight. The real weight is in impacts. The truth is that you can do it at any age. Get up and be willing to leave a mark.

MLK was not generally revered during his lifetime; He was decried and vilified by the mainstream (white) media. MLK had Cassandra vision, and was unstoppable even in death. Less stoppable in death. For MLK Day today, please let's read his most challenging proclamations and let us revere him for them.

We whitewash MLK - how fittingly absurd. I mean, we white-wash everything. We have to stop revering MLK for the wrong reasons, sanitized, domesticated, like Santa Claus and Jesus Christ. He was vehemently anti-racism, anti-oppression, anti-war, anti-materialism, pro-union, pro-social-services, anti-capitalism. Yes. MLK believed capitalism had outlived its usefulness and advocated democratic socialism.

...it is cruel jest to say to a BOOTLESS man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps.

Just as you won’t enjoy the fruits of the tree you dislike, so you won’t even wait to learn from people you hate.

You can't leave the show," King told Nichols. "We are there because you are there." Black people have been imagined in the future, he continued, emphasizing to the actress how important and ground breaking a fact that was. Furthermore, he told her, he had studied the Starfleet's command structure and believed that it mirrored that of the US Air Force, making Uhura --- a black woman! --- fourth in command of the ship.

The postmodernist belief in the relativism of truth, coupled with the clicker culture of mass media, in which attention spans are measured in New York minutes, leaves us with a bewildering array of truth claims packaged in infotainment units. It must be true—I saw it on television, the movies, the Internet. The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, That’s Incredible!, The Sixth Sense, Poltergeist, Loose Change, Zeitgeist: The Movie. Mysteries, magic, myths, and monsters. The occult and the supernatural. Conspiracies and cabals. The face on Mars and aliens on Earth. Bigfoot and Loch Ness. ESP and psi. UFOs and ETIs. OBEs and NDEs. JFK, RFK, and MLK Jr.—alphabet conspiracies. Altered states and hypnotic regression. Remote viewing and astroprojection. Ouija boards and tarot cards. Astrology and palm reading. Acupuncture and chiropractic. Repressed memories and false memories. Talking to the dead and listening to your inner child. It’s all an obfuscating amalgam of theory and conjecture, reality and fantasy, nonfiction and science fiction. Cue dramatic music. Darken the backdrop. Cast a shaft of light across the host’s face. Trust no one. The truth is out there. I want to believe.

Only in the darkness can you see the stars.

One of the first steps to successful leadership is to forget your age and remember your dream.

One of the first steps to successful leadership is to always forget your age and remember your dream regularly.

You don’t influence people by commanding them. When you are doing that, you are a manipulator and not a leader.

Haters can never rejoice especially when their enemy wins. The moment you can’t be happy when someone wins, watch yourself. That habit is not good for you.

Most of the world’s problems are caused by people who made education compulsory, but personal development optional. Because of them, we have many intelligent people who lack good characters.

The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. (MLK, Jr., Riverside Church, New York City, April 4, 1964) (Note: 50 years ago)

Ray: What else did they get rid of, truth, justice and the American way? Leto jr.: Nah, truth ended when they shot M.L.K.. The American way died over in Vietnam. Mitch: And Justice? Leto jr.: Shit, man, there’s no justice.... There’s just us.

If you hate to think, you are not different from some who is peeing on his academic certificates. The goal of education is to help you to think and lead.

We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.

Svaki čovjek mora odlučiti hoće li hodati u svjetlu kreativnog altruizma ili u tami destruktivnog egoizma.

And you told us: the storm is rising against the privileged minority of the earth, from which there is no shelter in isolation or armament and you told us: the storm will not abate until a just distribution of the fruits of the earth enables men (and women) everywhere to live in dignity and human decency.

We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation. We must move past indecision to action...If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.

So, just to take King, because he's visible. On Martin Luther King Day, he's greatly celebrated for what he did in the early 1960s when he was saying 'I Have a Dream' and 'let's get rid of racist sheriffs in Alabama.' That was okay. By 1965 he was getting to be a dangerous figure. For one thing, he was turning against the war in Vietnam pretty strongly. For another, he was working to be at the head of a developing poor people's movement. He was assassinated when he was taking part in a strike of sanitation workers and he was on his way to Washington for a poor people's convention. He was going beyond racist sheriffs in Alabama to northern racism, which is much more deep-seated and class-based.

It is no wonder that so much of the search for identity, among American Negroes, was championed by jazz musicians. Long before the modern essayists and scholars wrote of racial identity as a problem for a multiracial world, musicians were returning to their roots to affirm that which was stirring within their souls. Much of the power of our Freedom Movement in the United States has come from the music. It has strengthened us with its sweet rhythms when courage began to fail. It has calmed us with its rich harmonies when spirits were down. And now, Jazz is exported to the world. For, in a particular struggle of the Negro in America, there is something akin to the universal struggle of modern man. Everybody has the Blues. Everybody longs for meaning. Everybody needs to clap hands and be happy. Everybody longs for faith. In music, especially this broad category called jazz, there is a stepping-stone towards all these.

God has wrought many things out of oppression. He has endowed his creatures with the capacity to create and from this capacity has flowed the sweet songs of sorrow and joy that have allowed man to cope with his environment and many different situations. Jazz speaks for life. The Blues tell the story of life's difficulties, and if you think for a moment, you will realize that they take the hardest realities of life and put them into music, only to come out with some new hope or sense of triumph. This is triumphant music. Modern Jazz has continued in this tradition, singing the songs of a more complicated urban existence. When life itself offers no order and meaning, the musician creates an order and meaning from the sounds of the earth, which flow through his instrument.

Urban riots must now be recognized as durable social phenomena. They may be deplored, but they are there and should be understood. Urban riots are a special form of violence. They are not insurrections. The rioters are not seeking to seize territory or to attain control of institutions. They are mainly intended to shock the white community. They are a distorted form of social protest. The looting which is their principal feature serves many functions. It enables the most enraged and deprived Negro to take hold of consumer goods with the ease the white man does by using his purse. Often the Negro does not even want what he takes; he wants the experience of taking. But most of all, alienated from society and knowing that this society cherishes property above people, he is shocking it by abusing property rights. There are thus elements of emotional catharsis in the violent act. This may explain why most cities in which riots have occurred have not had a repetition, even though the causative conditions remain. It is also noteworthy that the amount of physical harm done to white people other than police is infinitesimal and in Detroit whites and Negroes looted in unity. A profound judgment of today’s riots was expressed by Victor Hugo a century ago. He said, ‘If a soul is left in the darkness, sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but he who causes the darkness.’ The policymakers of the white society have caused the darkness; they create discrimination; they structured slums; and they perpetuate unemployment, ignorance and poverty. It is incontestable and deplorable that Negroes have committed crimes; but they are derivative crimes. They are born of the greater crimes of the white society. When we ask Negroes to abide by the law, let us also demand that the white man abide by law in the ghettos. Day-in and day-out he violates welfare laws to deprive the poor of their meager allotments; he flagrantly violates building codes and regulations; his police make a mockery of law; and he violates laws on equal employment and education and the provisions for civic services. The slums are the handiwork of a vicious system of the white society; Negroes live in them but do not make them any more than a prisoner makes a prison. Let us say boldly that if the violations of law by the white man in the slums over the years were calculated and compared with the law-breaking of a few days of riots, the hardened criminal would be the white man. These are often difficult things to say but I have come to see more and more that it is necessary to utter the truth in order to deal with the great problems that we face in our society.

the FBI’s search for MLK’s killer began, a manhunt that would become the largest in American history,

But here’s the thing: Martin Luther King was not the “MLK” of his time, not the “MLK” of legend. Martin Luther King was public enemy number one. Seen as an even greater threat by our government, and a large portion of society, than Malcolm X was. Because what Martin Luther King Jr and Malcolm X fought for was the same: freedom from oppression.

Martin Luther King Jr., on April 4, 1967, at the Riverside Church, he speaks out against the Vietnam War. People push back against King. They tell him he's not patriotic. In that speech, he says that there comes a time when silence is betrayal. He says he's about to say this criticism because he loves the country, not because he hates the country. He also, in the same speech, says America is the greatest purveyor of violence in the world. But he says it's going to be a bitter but beautiful struggle to transform America, because he says the goal of America is freedom. Now, that's perfect. That's brilliant. That's beautiful. He's telling us all the different sides of our country and he's inspiring us to do something about it - right? - but he's also not calling us villains. He's saying that we can actually transform and create and build this beloved community. But King wants us to tell the story of poor people, farm workers. He wants us to end militarization and materialism and racism. So what I think, again, I think everything comes down to storytellers and the story, everything. And I - and I'm serious about that. And so we need to tell ourselves a different story about America.

Daddy said, in 'I Have a Dream', this is a part that most people missed in his speech, 'We must forever conduct ourselves on the high plane of dignity and discipline.' He was talking about how we talk, too. Words are power. [...] Death and life and the power of the tongue. You can murder somebody with your tongue. So when people say 'I'm not violent' because they don't do anything physically, it's not that. For some reason, people think love is some namby-pamby weak kind of thing. It's not. [...] Nonviolence for us is a love-centered way of thinking.

And you challenged us to breathe in Bernard Haring's words: the materialistic growth--mania for more and more production and more and more markets for selling unnecessary and even damaging products is a sin against the generation to come what shall we leave to them: rubbish, atomic weapons numerous enough to make the earth uninhabitable, a poisoned atmosphere, polluted water?

Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that. -Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

King had marched six weeks earlier through the Mississippi town where the civil rights workers Goodman, Chaney, and Schwerner were murdered. He had called it the most savage place he had ever seen. Now he revised his opinion: 'I think the people of Mississippi ought to come to Chicago to learn how to hate.

JUNE 17, 1990 Walter Mosley publishes Devil in a Blue Dress, the first of his hard-

Gamers play with vintage video games, including the Atari system developed by the black entrepreneur Jerry Lawson. (Lucas Oleniuk/Toronto Star/Getty Images)

You can decide to refuse to allow people who aim at hating you to achieve their aims.

And when I speak of love I'm not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality.

Together with a number of Negro and white reporters, I attended [Martin Luther] King's packed church. He spoke simply, emphasizing the nonviolent nature of the struggle, and told his congregation: "We are concerned not merely to win justice in the buses but rather to behave in a new and different way--to be nonviolent so that we may remove injustice itself, both from society and from ourselves. This is a struggle which we cannot lose, no matter what the apparent outcome, if we ourselves succeed in becoming better and more loving people.

But here’s the thing: Martin Luther King was not the “MLK” of his time, not the “MLK” of legend. Martin Luther King was public enemy number one. Seen as an even greater threat by our government, and a large portion of society, than Malcolm X was. Because what Martin Luther King Jr and Malcolm X fought for was the same: freedom from oppression. At times they used different words and different tactics, but it was their goal that was the threat. Their goal of freedom from racial oppression was and is a direct threat to the system of White Supremacy. And for all of Martin’s actions of peace and love, he was targeted with violence, harassed, arrested, blackmailed, followed by the FBI, and eventually murdered. For all of the pedestals MLK is now put on, far above the reach of ordinary black Americans, Martin was in his life viewed as the most dangerous man in America. Martin was the black man who asked for too much, too loudly. Martin was why white America couldn’t support equality. Because no matter what we ask for, if it threatens the system of White Supremacy, it will always be seen as too much. When we were slaves nursing their babies, we were not nice enough. When we were maids cleaning their homes we were not nice enough. When we were porters shining their shoes we were not nice enough. And when we danced and sang for their entertainment we were not nice enough. For hundreds of years we have been told that the path to freedom from racial oppression lies in our virtue, that our humanity must be earned. We simply don’t deserve equality yet. So when people say that they don’t like my tone, or when they say they can’t support the “militancy” of Black Lives Matter, or when they say that it would be easier if we just didn’t talk about race all the time—I ask one question: Do you believe in justice and equality? Because if you believe in justice and equality you believe in it all of the time, for all people. You believe in it for newborn babies, you believe in it for single mothers, you believe in it for kids in the street, you believe in justice and equality for people you like and people you don’t. You believe in it for people who don’t say please. And if there was anything I could say or do that would convince someone that I or people like me don’t deserve justice or equality, then they never believed in justice and equality in the first place. Yes, I am a Malcolm. And Martin, and Angela, Marcus, Rosa, Biko, Baldwin, Assata, Harriet, and Nina. I’m fighting for liberation. I’m filled with righteous anger and love. I’m shouting, as all before me have in their way. And I’m a human being who was born deserving justice and equality, and that is all you should need to know in order to stand by my side.

¡Líbres al fin! ¡Líbres al fín! Grácias a Dios ómnipotente, ¡somos libres al fín!

What did that Martin Luther King guy ever do for a white man? He was nothing but a black racist discriminating against whites left, right, and center.

Only in the darkness can you see the stars.