Martin Luther King, Jr.

"We must concentrate not merely on the negative expulsion of war but the postive affirmation of peace."

"War is a poor chisel to carve out tomorrow."

"We must use time creatively."

"Cowardice asks the question, is it safe? Expediency asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? But conscience asks the question, is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because it is right."

"Wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows."

"A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on the installment plan."

"A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom."

"All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence."

"Any religion that professes to be concerned about the souls of men and is not concerned about the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strangle them and the social conditions that cripple them is a spiritually moribund religion awaiting burial."

"At the center of non-violence stands the principle of love."

"Discrimination is a hellhound that gnaws at Negroes in every waking moment of their lives to remind them that the lie of their inferiority is accepted as truth in the society dominating them."

"Faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the whole staircase."

"I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant."

"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 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."

"I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality... I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word."

"I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law."

"If a man has not discovered something that he will die for, he isn't fit to live."

"If physical death is the price that I must pay to free my white brothers and sisters from a permanent death of the spirit, then nothing can be more redemptive."

"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."

"It is not enough to say we must not wage war. It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it."

"Life's most persistent and urgent question is, 'What are you doing for others?'"

"Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love."

"Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal."

"Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men."

"Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal."

"Property is intended to serve life, and no matter how much we surround it with rights and respect, it has no personal being. It is part of the earth man walks on. It is not man."

"The art of acceptance is the art of making someone who has just done you a small favor wish that he might have done you a greater one."

"The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character - that is the goal of true education."

"The quality, not the longevity, of one's life is what is important."

"The sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality."

"There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love."

"We must build dikes of courage to hold back the flood of fear."

"We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies."

"We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools."

"Whatever your life's work is, do it well. A man should do his job so well that the living, the dead, and the unborn could do it no better."