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Mother Dear, one day I'm going to turn this world upside down. --From My Brother Martin, by Christine King Farris

Martin Luther King, Jr.

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Martin Luther King, Jr.
Age: 39 †
Born: 1929
Born: January 15
Died: 1968
Died: April 4
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More quotes by Martin Luther King, Jr.

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We must see the great distinction between a reform movement and a revolutionary movement. We are called upon to raise certain basic questions about the whole society . . . . What America must be told today is that she must be born again. The whole structure of American life must be changed.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
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If we get setbacks and if something happens where the Civil Rights Bill is watered down, for instance, if the Negro feels that he can do nothing but move from one ghetto to another and one slum to another, the despair and the disappointment will be so great that it will be very difficult to keep the struggle disciplined and nonviolent.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
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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.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
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A second thing that an individual must do in seeking to love his enemy is to discover the element of good in his enemy, and everytime you begin to hate that person and think of hating that person, realize that there is some good there and look at those good points which will over-balance the bad points.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
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I would suffer all the humiliation, all the torture, the absolute ostracism and even death, to prevent violence
Martin Luther King, Jr.
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I've always tried to be what I call militantly nonviolent. I don't believe that anyone could seriously accuse me of not being totally committed to the breakdown of segregation.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
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If a city has a 30% Negro population, then it is logical to assume that Negroes should have at least 30% of the jobs in any particular company, and jobs in all categories rather than only in menial areas.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
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The choice is not between violence and nonviolence but between nonviolence and nonexistence.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
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I became convinced that noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. No other person has been more eloquent and passionate in getting this idea across than Henry David Thoreau. As a result of his writings and personal witness, we are the heirs of a legacy of creative protest.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
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What seems so necessary today may not even be desirable tomorrow.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Courage faces fear and thereby masters it. Cowardice represses fear and is thereby mastered by it.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
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When I took up the cross I recognized it's meaning. The cross is something that you bear, and ultimately, that you die on.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Our problem is not to be rid of fear but rather to harness and master it.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
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There may have been a time when war served as a negative good by preventing the spread and growth of an evil force, but the destructive power of modern weapons eliminates even the possibility that war may serve as a negative good.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
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If the church of today does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authentic ring, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
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True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that a system that produces beggars needs to be repaved. We are called to be the Good Samaritan, but after you lift so many people out of the ditch you start to ask, maybe the whole road to Jericho needs to be repaved.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
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By opening our lives to God in Christ, we become new creatures. This experience, which Jesus spoke of as the new birth, is essential if we are to be transformed nonconformists . . . Only through an inner spiritual transformation do we gain the strength to fight vigorously the evils of the world in a humble and loving spirit.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
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I would not hesitate to say that it is unfortunate that so-called demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham at this time, but I would say in more emphatic terms that it is even more unfortunate that the white power structure of this city left the Negro community with no other alternative.
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.