Great Words From a Great Man: Martin Luther King

Martin Luther King, Jr. was the greatest leader in American Civil Rights and one of the greatest public speakers of all time.  He could challenge the thinking of the status quo in just a few words, and hold large crowds spellbound. Those words still hold great truth today, and we are proud to honor them.  Here are 19 quotes that we could all learn from today, and throughout our lives.

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“Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.”

— Martin Luther King, Jr.

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“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.”

― Martin Luther King, Jr.

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“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.”

― Martin Luther King, Jr.

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“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.”

–Martin Luther King, Jr.

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

–Martin Luther King, Jr.

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“History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.”

— Martin Luther King, Jr.

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“You may be 38 years old, as I happen to be. And one day, some great opportunity stands before you and calls you to stand up for some great principle, some great issue, some great cause. And you refuse to do it because you are afraid…. You refuse to do it because you want to live longer…. You’re afraid that you will lose your job, or you are afraid that you will be criticized or that you will lose your popularity, or you’re afraid that somebody will stab you, or shoot at you or bomb your house; so you refuse to take the stand.

 Well, you may go on and live until you are 90, but you’re just as dead at 38 as you would be at 90. And the cessation of breathing in your life is but the belated announcement of an earlier death of the spirit.”

― Martin Luther King Jr.

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

 –Martin Luther King, Jr.

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“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.”

–Martin Luther King, Jr.

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“Almost always, the creative dedicated minority has made the world better.”

–Martin Luther King, Jr.

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“The time is always right to do what is right.”

–Martin Luther King, Jr.

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“If I cannot do great things, I can do small things in a great way”

― Martin Luther King, Jr.

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“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”

–Martin Luther King, Jr.

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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.”

― Martin Luther King, Jr.

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“On some positions, cowardice asks the question, is it expedient? And then expedience comes along and asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? Conscience asks the question, is it right? There comes a time when one must take the position that is neither safe nor politic nor popular, but he must do it because conscience tells him it is right.”

― Martin Luther King, Jr.

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“No one really knows why they are alive until they know what they’d die for.”

― Martin Luther King Jr.

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“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.  ― Martin Luther King, Jr.

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“Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.”

–Martin Luther King, Jr.

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“A riot is the language of the unheard.”

–Martin Luther King, Jr.

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