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Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.

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
Human Rights Activist
Humanitarian
Leader
Minister
Pacifist
Pastor
Peace Activist
Politician
Preacher
Theologian
Atlanta
Georgia
MLK
Martin Luther King
Dr. King
Michael King
Michael King Jr.
M.L. King
Martin Luther
Jr. King
Martin Luther King
Jr.
Love
Stands
Demand
Anemic
Justice
Implementing
Politics
Correcting
Power
Abusive
Best
Reckless
Everything
Sentimental
Without
Demands

More quotes by Martin Luther King, Jr.

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We are called upon to help the discouraged beggars in life's marketplace. But one day we must come to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.
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If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as a Michaelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, 'Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.
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Peace is not merely the absence of war but the presence of justice, of law, of order —in short, of government.
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It is a sad fact that because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, and our proneness to adjust to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch-antirevolutionaries.
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Nonviolence is absolute commitment to the way of love. Love is not emotional bash it is not empty sentimentalism. It is the active outpouring of one's whole being into the being of another.
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I choose to give my life for those who have been left out of the sunlight of opportunity
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I know that love is ultimately the only answer to mankind's problems. And I'm going to talk about it everywhere I go. I know it isn't popular to talk about it in some circles today. I'm not talking about emotional bosh when I talk about love, I'm talking about a strong, demanding love.
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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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If you succumb to the temptation of using violence in the struggle, unborn generations will be the recipients of a long and desolate night of bitterness, and your chief legacy to the future will be an endless reign of meaningless chaos.
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We must work passionately and unrelentingly for the goal of freedom, but we must be sure that our hands are clean in the struggle. We must never struggle with falsehood, hate, or malice. We must never become bitter.
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The nonviolent approach does not immediately change the heart of the oppressor. It first does something to the hearts and souls of those committed to it. It gives them new self-respect it calls up resources of strength and courage they did not know they had.
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In order to be true to one's conscience and true to God, a righteous man has no alternative but to refuse to cooperate with an evil system.
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Wherever schools can be integrated through the busing method, and where it won't be just a, a terrible inconvenience, I think it ought to be done.
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To sway an audience, you must watch them as you speak.
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Lord help me to see M. L. King as M. L. King in his true perspective.
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Everybody can be great...because anybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.
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Don't allow anybody to make you feel that you're nobody.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Every man is somebody because he is a child of God.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Racial segregation must be seen for what it is, and that is an evil system, a new form of slavery covered up with certain niceties of complexity.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Through nonviolent resistance the Negro will be able to rise to the noble height of opposing the unjust system while loving the perpetrators of the system.
Martin Luther King, Jr.