Martin Luther King Jr. photo

Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was one of the pivotal leaders of the American civil rights movement. King was a Baptist minister, one of the few leadership roles available to black men at the time. He became a civil rights activist early in his career. He led the Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955–1956) and helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (1957), serving as its first president. His efforts led to the 1963 March on Washington, where King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech. Here he raised public consciousness of the civil rights movement and established himself as one of the greatest orators in U.S. history. In 1964, King became the youngest person to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to end segregation and racial discrimination through civil disobedience and other non-violent means.

King was assassinated on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee. He was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Jimmy Carter in 1977. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day was established as a national holiday in the United States in 1986. In 2004, King was posthumously awarded a Congressional Gold Medal.


“On the one hand we are called to play the good Samaritan on life's roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring."A Time to Break Silence," at Riverside Church”
Martin Luther King Jr.
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“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.”
Martin Luther King Jr.
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“But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough can you see the stars.”
Martin Luther King Jr.
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“The saving of our world from pending doom will come, not through the complacent adjustment of the conforming majority, but through the creative maladjustment of a nonconforming minority.”
Martin Luther King Jr.
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“Pada akhirnya bukan kata-kata menyakitkan dari musuh yang selalu kita ingat, tapi diamnya para sahabat yang dulu mendukung kita. ”
Martin Luther King Jr.
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“A man can't ride your back unless it's bent”
Martin Luther King Jr.
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“The end of life is not to be happy, nor to achieve pleasure and avoid pain, but to do the will of God, come what may.”
Martin Luther King Jr.
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“A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.”
Martin Luther King Jr.
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“We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak.”
Martin Luther King Jr.
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“This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism.”
Martin Luther King Jr.
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“Without love, there is no reason to know anyone, for love will in the end connect us to our neighbors, our children and our hearts.”
Martin Luther King Jr.
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“Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it.”
Martin Luther King Jr.
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“Be The Peace You Wish To See In The World!”
Martin Luther King Jr.
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“If we are to have peace on earth, our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Our loyalties must transcend our race, our tribe, our class, and our nation; and this means we must develop a world perspective.”
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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“It is cheerful to God when you rejoice or laugh from the bottom of your heart.”
Martin Luther King Jr.
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“It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important.”
Martin Luther King Jr.
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“Forgiveness is not an occasional act, it is a constant attitude.”
Martin Luther King Jr.
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“If we do an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, we will be a blind and toothless nation.”
Martin Luther King Jr.
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“We shall overcome.”
Martin Luther King Jr.
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“A lie cannot live.”
Martin Luther King Jr.
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“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.”
Martin Luther King Jr.
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“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.”
Martin Luther King Jr.
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“One's dignity may be assaulted, vandalized, cruelly mocked, but it an never be taken away unless it is surrendered.”
Martin Luther King Jr.
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“All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality.”
Martin Luther King Jr.
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“Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.”
Martin Luther King Jr.
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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
Martin Luther King Jr.
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“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”
Martin Luther King Jr.
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“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.”
Martin Luther King Jr.
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“For you will never be what you ought to be until they [your fellow humans] are what they ought to be.”
Martin Luther King Jr.
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“I Have A Dream”
Martin Luther King Jr.
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“One of the great liabilities of history is that all too many people fail to remain awake through great periods of social change. Every society has its protectors of status quo and its fraternities of the indifferent who are notorious for sleeping through revolutions. Today, our very survival depends on our ability to stay awake, to adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant and to face the challenge of change.”
Martin Luther King Jr.
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“Whenever men and women straighten their backs up, they are going somewhere, because a man can't ride your back unless it is bent”
Martin Luther King Jr.
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“A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.”
Martin Luther King Jr.
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“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.”
Martin Luther King Jr.
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“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.”
Martin Luther King Jr.
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“We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.”
Martin Luther King Jr.
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“One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.”
Martin Luther King Jr.
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“We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people.”
Martin Luther King Jr.
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“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.”
Martin Luther King Jr.
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“The more I thought about human nature, the more I saw how our tragic inclination for sin/mistakes causes us to use our minds to rationalize our action.”
Martin Luther King Jr.
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“Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.”
Martin Luther King Jr.
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“No work is insignificant. All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.”
Martin Luther King Jr.
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“Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy to a friend.”
Martin Luther King Jr.
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“We must use time creatively - and forever realize that the time is always hope to do great things.”
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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“There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love.”
Martin Luther King Jr.
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“The quality, not the longevity, of one's life is what is important.”
Martin Luther King Jr.
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“We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence.”
Martin Luther King Jr.
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“We must live together as brothers or perish together as fools.”
Martin Luther King Jr.
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