Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

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

The time is always right to do what is right.

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

I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.

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.

We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.

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

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.

Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.

Intelligence plus character—that is the goal of true education.

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.

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

In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.

There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right.

We are not makers of history. We are made by history.

Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle.

Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.

A riot is the language of the unheard.

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

The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.

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

Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon, which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it. It is a sword that heals.

I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality.

Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.

Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable... Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle.

The hope of a secure and livable world lies with disciplined nonconformists who are dedicated to justice, peace and brotherhood.

There is nothing more tragic than to find an individual bogged down in the length of life, devoid of breadth.

A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.

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.

He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it.

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

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

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

We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right.

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.

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.

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.

Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend.

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

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

True peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice.

We may have all come on different ships, but we're in the same boat now.

The moral arc of the universe bends at the elbow of justice.

We must come to see that the end we seek is a society at peace with itself, a society that can live with its conscience.

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.

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

The day we see the truth and cease to speak is the day we begin to die.

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.