The time is always right to do the right thing.
A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.
There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love.
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.
The choice is not between violence and nonviolence but between nonviolence and nonexistence.
Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’
Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it.
Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.
One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.
Free at last, Free at last, Thank God almighty we are free at last.
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.
Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.
True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.
I agree with Dante, that the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in a period of moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.
The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.
Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.
The day we see the truth and cease to speak is the day we begin to die.
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.
Lightning makes no sound until it strikes.
If you lose hope, somehow you lose the vitality that keeps moving, you lose that courage to be, that quality that helps you go on in spite of it all. And so today I still have a dream.