Martin Luther King Jr. (born Michael King Jr., January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American Baptist minister and leader in the Civil Rights Movement.

1152. Capitalism does not permit an even flow of economic resources. With this system, a small privileged few are rich beyond conscience, and almost all others are doomed to be poor at some level. That’s the way the system works. And since we know that the system will not change the rules, we are going to have to change the system.

1153. Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.

1154. What is wrong in the world today is that the nations of the world are engaged in a bitter, colossal contest for supremacy.

1155. 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.

1156. A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on the installment plan.

1071. I am not interested in power for power’s sake, but I’m interested in power that is moral, that is right and that is good.

1072. People fail to get along because they fear each other; they fear each other because they don’t know each other; they don’t know each other because they have not communicated with each other.

1073. I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality… I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.

1074. We will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.

1075. Law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress.

1076. We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.

670. It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important.

671. Since being in India, I am more convinced than ever before that the method of nonviolent resistance is the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for justice and human dignity.

672. 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.

673. The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character – that is the goal of true education.

674. He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.

108. Faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the whole staircase.

109. We are not makers of history. We are made by history.

110. The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.

111. Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.

112. That old law about 'an eye for an eye' leaves everybody blind. The time is always right to do the right thing.

113. Whatever your life's work is, do it well. A man should do his job so well that the living, the dead, and the unborn could do it no better.

114. The principle of self defense, even involving weapons and bloodshed, has never been condemned, even by Gandhi.