Fighting for Justice in this Unjust World: Words of Inspiration

Martin Luther King, Jr.

You are not only responsible for what you say, but also for what you do not say.
Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.
We are prone to judge success by the index of our salaries or the size of our automobiles rather than by the quality of our service and relationship to mankind.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love.
We must learn that passively to accept an unjust system is to cooperate with that system, and thereby to become a participant in its evil.
A man hasn't started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his existence to the broader concerns of all humanity.
Our scientific powers have outrun our spiritual powers; we have guided missiles and mis-guided men.
Violence is the language of the unheard.
Many people fear nothing more terribly than to take a position which stands out sharply and clearly from the prevailing opinion. The tendency of most is to adopt a view that is so ambiguous that it will include everything and so popular that it will include everybody. Not a few men who cherish lofty and noble ideals hide them under a bushel for fear of being called different.
It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one destiny, affects all indirectly.
Not everybody could be famous but everybody can be great because greatness is determined by service.
Quietly endure, silently suffer and patiently wait.
There is nothing more dangerous than to build a society with a large segment of people in that society who feel that they have no stake in it; who feel that that have nothing to lose. People who have stake in their society, protect that society, but when they don't have it, they unconsciously want to destroy it.
Morality cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. Judicial decrees may not change the heart, but they can restrain the heartless.
Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man's sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true.
Those who love peace must learn to organize as effectively as those who love war.
True peace is not merely the absence of tension: it is the presence of justice.
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.
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.
Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable... Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.
We have flown the air like birds and swum the sea like fishes, but have yet to learn the simple act of walking the earth like brothers.
There is nothing more majestic than the determined courage of individuals willing to suffer and sacrifice for their freedom and dignity.
We must remember that intelligence is not enough. Intelligence plus character-that is the goal of true education. The complete education gives one not only power of concentration, but worthy objectives upon which to concentrate.
One's dignity may be assaulted, vandalized, cruelly mocked, but it an never be taken away unless it is surrendered.
Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.
I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed, without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today – my own government.
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 the law.
Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.
The question is not if we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. The nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.
No work is insignificant. All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.
Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.
The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.
One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.
A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. ... A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say, "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.
A right delayed is a right denied.
We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.
The day we see the truth and cease to speak is the day we begin to die.
Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars... Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.
No person has the right to rain on your dreams.
Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.
True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.
Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it.
As my sufferings mounted I soon realized that there were two ways in which I could respond to my situation -- either to react with bitterness or seek to transform the suffering into a creative force. I decided to follow the latter course.
An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.
Life's most persistent and urgent question is, "What are you doing for others?".
Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.
There comes a time when silence is betrayal.
Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.
A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.
Science investigates; religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge, which is power; religion gives man wisdom, which is control. Science deals mainly with facts; religion deals mainly with values. The two are not rivals.
Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy to a friend.
There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love.
We must live together as brothers or perish together as fools.
People fail to get along because they fear each other; they fear each other because they don't know each other; they don't know each other because they have not communicated with each other.
The time is always right to do the right thing.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation were they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
Forgiveness is not an occasional act, it is a constant attitude.
We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.
Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal.
On some positions, Cowardice asks the question, "Is it safe?" Expediency asks the question, "Is it politic?" And Vanity comes along and 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 he must do it because Conscience tells him it is right.
Not only will we have to repent for the sins of bad people; but we also will have to repent for the appalling silence of good people.
Those who are not looking for happiness are the most likely to find it, because those who are searching forget that the surest way to be happy is to seek happiness for others.
Only in the darkness can you see the stars.
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
Never, never be afraid to do what's right, especially if the well-being of a person or animal is at stake. Society's punishments are small compared to the wounds we inflict on our soul when we look the other way.
The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
If you can't fly then run, if you can't run then walk, if you can't walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.
In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.
Faith is taking the first step even when you can't see the whole staircase.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.
Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time: the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence. Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.
Man was born into barbarism when killing his fellow man was a normal condition of existence. He became endowed with a conscience. And he has now reached the day when violence toward another human being must become as abhorrent as eating another's flesh.
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.
When we ask Negroes to abide by the law, let us also declare that the white man does not 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; he violates laws on equal employment and education and the provisions of civil services. The slums are the handiwork of a vicious system of the white society; Negroes live in them, but they do not make them, any more than a prisoner makes a prison.
It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction....The chain reaction of evil--hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars--must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.
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.
Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man's sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true.
The bombs in Vietnam explode at home; they destroy the hopes and possibilities for a decent America.
Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice. Justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love.
The Negroes of America had taken the President, the press and the pulpit at their word when they spoke in broad terms of freedom and justice. But the absence of brutality and unregenerate evil is not the presence of justice. To stay murder is not the same thing as to ordain brotherhood.
Many of the ugly pages of American history have been obscured and forgotten....America owes a debt of justice which it has only begun to pay. If it loses the will to finish or slackens in its determination, history will recall its crimes and the country that would be great will lack the most indispensable element of greatness--justice.
Man is man because he is free to operate within the framework of his destiny. He is free to deliberate, to make decisions, and to choose between alternatives. He is distinguished from animals by his freedom to do evil or to do good and to walk the high road of beauty or tread the low road of ugly degeneracy.
A good many observers have remarked that if equality could come at once the Negro would not be ready for it. I submit that the white American is even more unprepared.
If a man hasn't discovered something that he will die for, he isn't fit to live.
To be a Negro in America is to hope against hope.
Being a Negro in America means trying to smile when you want to cry. It means trying to hold on to physical life amid psychological death. It means the pain of watching your children grow up with clouds of inferiority in their mental skies. It means having your legs cut off, and then being condemned for being a cripple. It means seeing your mother and father spiritually murdered by the slings and arrows of daily exploitation, and then being hated for being an orphan.