362 quotes
Modern psychology recognizes what Jesus taught centuries ago: Hate divides the personality and love in an amazing and inexorable way unites it.
Loving Your Enemies (1957)
Somebody must have sense enough and morality enough to cut off the chain of hate and the chain of evil in the universe. And you do that by love.
Loving Your Enemies (1957)
But in spite of temporary victories, violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem; it merely creates new and more complicated ones.
Three Ways of Meeting Oppression (1958)
We must substitute courage for caution.
A riot is the language of the unheard.
A second way that oppressed people sometimes deal with oppression is to resort to physical violence and corroding hatred. Violence often brings about momentary results.
Three Ways of Meeting Oppression (1958)
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I Have a Dream (1963)
As a preacher... I must admit that I have gone through those moments when I was greatly disappointed with the church and what it has done in this period of social change.
Through violence you may murder a liar but you can't establish truth. Through violence you may murder a hater, but you can't murder hate. Darkness cannot put out darkness. Only light can do that.
Love is creative, understanding goodwill for all men. It is the refusal to defeat any individual. ... Love is understanding, redemptive goodwill for all men, so that you love everybody, because God loves them.
I have consistently preached that nonviolence demands that the means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek.
Letter from a Birmingham Jail (1963)
I say to you today that I still stand by nonviolence.
Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (1967)
We must reaffirm our commitment to nonviolence.
Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (1967)
I don't know how he feels now, but I know that I have often wished that he would talk less of violence, because violence is not going to solve our problem.
Was not Jesus an extremist for love: "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you."
Letter from a Birmingham Jail (1963)
All tyrants, past, present and future, are powerless to bury the truths in these declarations, no matter how extensive their legions, how vast their power and how malignant their evil.
Emancipation Proclamation Centennial Address (1962)
I have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
Cobo Center speech (1963)
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.
The Role of the Behavioral Scientist in the Civil Rights Movement (1967)
And this becomes a point of balance when you can forget yourself into immortality. You're not so absorbed in self, but you are absorbed in something beyond self.
Conquering Self-centeredness (1957)
The means by which we live have outdistanced the ends for which we live. Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided man.
Strength to Love (1963)