MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. | Quotable

“Democracy is the greatest form of government to my mind that man has ever conceived, but the weakness is that we have never touched it. Isn’t it true that we have often taken necessities from the masses to give luxuries to the classes? Isn’t it true that we have often in our democracy trampled over individuals and races with the iron feet of oppression?” – Sermon titled “The Love that Forgives,” given Nov. 17, 1957, at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Ala.

“As I have walked among the desperate, rejected and angry young men, I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they asked, and rightly so, ‘What about Vietnam?’ They asked if our own nation wasn’t using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted.” – “Beyond Vietnam” speech April 4, 1967, in New York City

“I wish that I could say that this is just a passing phase in the cycles of our nation’s life, certainly times of war, times of reaction throughout the society, but I suspect that we are now experiencing the coming to the surface of a triple-prong sickness that has been lurking within our body politic from its very beginning. That is, the sickness of racism, excessive materialism and militarism.” – “The Three Evils of Society” speech delivered Aug. 31, 1967, at the National Conference on New Politics in Chicago

“So the first question the priest asked, the first question the Levite asked was, ‘If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?’ But then the Good Samaritan came by, and he reversed the question: ‘If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?’ That’s the question before you tonight. Not, ‘If I stop to help the [1,300 striking] sanitation workers, what will happen to my job?’ … The question is, ‘If I do not stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to them?’ That’s the question.” – “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech April 3, 1968, at Mason Temple in Memphis, Tenn.