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It is our experience that the nation doesn't move around questions of genuine equality for the poor and for black people until it is confronted massively, dramatically in terms of direct action.

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
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Atlanta
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MLK
Martin Luther King
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Michael King
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Martin Luther King
Jr.
Around
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Equality
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Dramatically

More quotes by Martin Luther King, Jr.

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I feel that the time is always right to do what is right. Where progress for the Negro in America is concerned, there is a tragic misconception of time among whites. They seem to cherish a strange, irrational notion that something in the very flow of time will cure all ills.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
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I have a dream that one day little black boys and girls will be holding hands with little white boys and girls.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Forgiveness is not an occasional act. It is a permanent attitude. That which I was not but could have been. That which I would have done but did not do. Can I find the fortitude to remember in truth,to understand, to submit, to forgive and to be free to move on in time?
Martin Luther King, Jr.
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We decided to set our direct-action program around the Easter season, realizing that, with exception of Christmas, this was the largest shopping period of the year. Knowing that a strong economic withdrawal program would be the by-product of direct action.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Life isn't worth living until you have found something worth dying for.
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 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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There is a more excellent way, of love and nonviolent protest.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
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The words 'bad timing' came to be ghosts haunting our every move in Birmingham. Yet people who used this argument were ignorant of the background of our planning...they did not realize that it was ridiculous to speak of timing when the clock of history showed that the Negro had already suffered one hundred years of delay.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
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We may have all come on different ships, but we're in the same boat now.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Nothing pains some people more than having to think
Martin Luther King, Jr.
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One day we will learn that the heart can never be totally right if the head is totally wrong. Only through the bringing together of head and heart-intelligence and goodness-shall man rise to a fulfillment of his true nature.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
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I do think there must be centralized leadership in the sense that, say, in our struggle all of the leaders coordinate their efforts, cooperate and, and at least evince a degree of unity.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
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I am what I am because of who we all are.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
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War is a poor chisel to carve out tomorrow.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
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In the final analysis, means and ends must cohere because the end is preexistent in the means, and, ultimately, destructive means cannot bring about constructive ends.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
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This is the unusual thing about nonviolence -- nobody is defeated, everybody shares in the victory.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Lukewarm acceptance is more bewildering than outright rejection.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
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My parents would always tell me that I should not hate the white man, but that it was my duty as a Christian to love him.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
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And violence is impractical, because the old eye for an eye philosophy ends up leaving everybody blind .. It is immoral because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for everybody. Means and ends are inseparable. The means represent the ideal in the making in the long run of history destructive means cannot bring about constructive ends.
Martin Luther King, Jr.