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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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Martin Luther King, Jr.
Age: 39 †
Born: 1929
Born: January 15
Died: 1968
Died: April 4
Civil Rights Advocate
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More quotes by 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.
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Many white Americans of good will have never connected bigotry with economic exploitation. They have deplored prejudice but tolerated or ignored economic injustice.
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If I hit you and you hit me and I hit you back and you hit me back and go on, you see, that goes on ad infinitum. It just never ends. Somewhere somebody must have a little sense, and that's the strong person.
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There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love.
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Means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek.
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I must face the fact, as all others in positions of leadership must do, that America today is an extremely sick nation, and that something could well happen to me at any time. I feel, though, that my cause is so right, so moral, that if I should lose my life, in some way it would aid the cause.
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I am convinced that love is the most durable power in the world. It is not an expression of impractical idealism, but of practical realism.
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There is nothing more dangerous than to build a society with a large segment of people in that society who feel that they have no stake in it who feel that that have nothing to lose. People who have stake in their society, protect that society, but when they don't have it, they unconsciously want to destroy it.
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But while so many white Americans are unaware of conditions inside the ghetto, there are very few ghetto dwellers who are unaware of the life outside. The television sets bombard them day by day with the opulence of the larger society.
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Violence ends up defeating itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers.
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Science deals mainly with facts religion deals mainly with values. The two are not rivals. They are complementary.
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Brutality was imprisoned in a lumious glare revealing the naked truth to the whole world
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A piece of freedom is no longer enough for human beings...unlike bread, a slice of liberty does not finish hunger. Freedom is like life. It cannot be had in installments. Freedom is indivisible--we have it all, or we are not free.
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Moral principles have lost their distinctiveness. For modern man, absolute right and absolute wrong are a matter of what the majority is doing.
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The self cannot be self without other selves.
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If you haven't found something worth dying for, you're not fit to live.
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The supreme task is to organize and unite people so that their anger becomes a transforming force.
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We must face the appalling fact that we have been betrayed by both the Democratic and Republican Parties.
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The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be... The nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.
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When evil men plot, good men must plan. When evil men burn and bomb, good men must build and bind. When evil men shout ugly words of hatred, good men must commit themselves to the glories of love.
Martin Luther King, Jr.