105 Powerful Martin Luther King Jr. Quotes

Studying the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is an important part of studying Dr. King’s legacy. Below, we share some of our favorite Martin Luther King Jr. quotes for the classroom.

An important caveat: In recent years, there’s been increasing conversation about the tendency to focus on “inspirational” King quotes without engaging in the civil rights leader’s radical work. It’s important to introduce the Martin Luther King Jr. quotes below as part of a broader context and examination of his life.

Famous Martin Luther King Jr. Quotes

1. “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

2. “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”

3. “So even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream.”

4. “Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.”

5. “Only when it is dark enough can you see the stars.”

6. “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”

7. “Intelligence plus character—that is the goal of true education.”

8. “Forgiveness is not an occasional act; it is a permanent attitude.”

9. “The time is always ripe to do right.”

10. “And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania. Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado. Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California. But not only that. Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia. Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee. Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring!”

11. “Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy to a friend.”

12. “We have learned to fly the air like birds and swim the sea like fish, but we have not learned the simple art of living together as brothers.”

13. “Everybody can be great because everybody can serve.”

14. “Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter with me now. Because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind.”

15. “One day we will learn that the heart can never be totally right when the head is totally wrong.”

16. “Three hundred years of humiliation, abuse, and deprivation cannot be expected to find voice in a whisper.”

17. “If you are seeking the highest good, I think you can find it through love.”

18. “We must keep moving. If you can’t fly, run; if you can’t run, walk; if you can’t walk, crawl; but by all means keep moving.”

19. “So it means that we must rise up and protest courageously wherever we find segregation. Yes, we must do it nonviolently. We cannot afford to use violence in the struggle.”

20. “There is no such thing as separate but equal. Separation, segregation, inevitably makes for inequality.”

21. “Equality is not only a matter of quantity but of quality; not merely of mathematics and geometry, but of psychology.”

22. “The past is prophetic in that it asserts loudly that wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.”

23. “There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love.”

24. “Shallow understanding from people of goodwill is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”

25. “If I sought to answer all of the criticisms that cross my desk, my secretaries would be engaged in little else in the course of the day, and I would have no time for constructive work.”

26. “I could never adjust to the separate waiting rooms, separate eating places, separate rest rooms, partly because the separate was always unequal, and partly because the very idea of separation did something to my sense of dignity and self-respect.”

27. “Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.”

28. “The principle of nonviolent resistance seeks to reconcile the truths of two opposites—acquiescence and violence—while avoiding the extremes and immoralities of both.”

29. “Our problem is not to be rid of fear but rather to harness and master it.”

30. “The trailblazers in human, academic, scientific, and religious freedom have always been nonconformists.”

31. “The device of ‘rejection’ may temporarily cover up anxiety, but it does not bestow peace of mind and emotional security.”

32. “If a man hasn’t discovered something that he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.”

33. “We must accept finite disappointment but never lose infinite hope.”

34. “We must either learn to live together as brothers or we are all going to perish together as fools.”

35. “On some positions, Cowardice asks the question, ‘Is it safe?’ Expediency asks the question, ‘Is it politic?’ And Vanity comes along and asks the question, ‘Is it popular?’ But Conscience asks the question, ‘Is it right?’ And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must do it because Conscience tells him it is right.”

36. “The beauty of genuine brotherhood and peace is more precious than diamonds or silver or gold.”

37. “Let us be dissatisfied until the tragic walls that separate the outer city of wealth and comfort from the inner city of poverty and despair shall be crushed by the battering rams of the forces of justice.”

38. “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

39. “For all of us today, the battle is in our hands. The road ahead is not altogether a smooth one. There are no broad highways to lead us easily and inevitably to quick solutions. We must keep going.”

40. “In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.”

41. “Out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope.”

42. “We shall overcome because the arc of a moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

43. “I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.”

44. “Make a career of humanity. Commit yourself to the noble struggle for equal rights. You will make a better person of yourself, a greater nation of your country, and a finer world to live in.”

45. “If we are to have peace on earth, our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Our loyalties must transcend our race, our tribe, our class, and our nation; and this means we must develop a world perspective.”

46. “I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality, and freedom for their spirits.”

47. “It is not enough to say we must not wage war. It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it.”

48. “Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies.”

49. “True peace is not merely the absence of tension: it is the presence of justice.”

50. “Love is the greatest force in the universe. It is the heartbeat of the moral cosmos.”

51. “Don’t ever let anyone pull you so low as to hate them. We must use the weapon of love. We must have the compassion and understanding for those who hate us.”

52. “Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”

53. “Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.”

54. “Every man lives in two realms, the internal and the external. The internal is that realm of spiritual ends expressed in art, literature, morals, and religion. The external is that complex of devices, techniques, mechanisms, and instrumentalities by means of which we live.”

55. “Ultimately a genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.”

56. “I know that love is ultimately the only answer to mankind’s problems.”

57. “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is: What are you doing for others?“

58. “And I would submit to you this morning that what is wrong in the world today is that the nations of the world are engaged in a bitter, colossal contest for supremacy.”

59. “Occasionally in life one develops a conviction so precious and meaningful that he will stand on it till the end.”

60. “We will not build a peaceful world by following a negative path. It is not enough to say ‘We must not wage war.’ It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it. We must concentrate not merely on the negative expulsion of war, but on the positive affirmation of peace.”

61. “Hate is too great a burden to bear.”

62. “Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom.”

63. “A man dies when he refuses to stand up for that which is right. A man dies when he refuses to stand up for justice. A man dies when he refuses to take a stand for that which is true.”

64. “Be a bush if you can’t be a tree. If you can’t be a highway, just be a trail. If you can’t be a sun, be a star. For it isn’t by size that you win or fail. Be the best of whatever you are.”

65. “There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.”

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

67. “An individual has not started living fully until they can rise above the narrow confines of individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of humanity.”

68. “The nonviolent resister not only refuses to shoot his opponent, but he also refuses to hate him.”

69. “We’ve got to give ourselves to this struggle until the end. Nothing would be more tragic than to stop at this point, in Memphis. We’ve got to see it through. And when we have our march, you need to be there. Be concerned about your brother. You may not be on strike, but either we go up together, or we go down together.”

70. “We must walk on in the days ahead with an audacious faith in the future.”

71. “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.”

72. “When people get caught up with that which is right and they are willing to sacrifice for it, there is no stopping point short of victory.”

73. “There is nothing more tragic in life to find an individual bogged down in the length of life, devoid of the breadth.”

74. “Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.”

75. “We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love.”

76. “Instead of making history, we are made by history.”

77. “We must constantly build dikes of courage to hold back the flood of fear.”

78. “There comes a time when people get tired of being pushed out of the glittering sunlight of life’s July and left standing amid the piercing chill of an alpine November. There comes a time.”

79. “In some not too distant tomorrow, the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty.”

80. “We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We will meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will and we will still love you.”

81. “There’s something about love that builds up and is creative. There is something about hate that tears down and is destructive. So love your enemies.”

82. “I want to be the white man’s brother, not his brother-in-law.”

83. “Justice too long delayed is justice denied.”

84. “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.”

85. “I cannot forget that the Nobel Prize for Peace was also a commission—a commission to work harder than I had ever worked before for ‘the brotherhood of man.’”

86. “All too many of those who live in affluent America ignore those who exist in poor America.”

87. “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.”

88. “I think there can be a collective leadership. Maybe some symbolize the struggle [for human rights] a little more than others, but I think it’s absolutely necessary for the leadership to be united in order to make the revolution effective.”

89. “The job of the school is to teach so well that family background is no longer an issue.”

90. “There is no deficit in human resources; the deficit is in human will.”

91. “Another reason why we must love our enemies is that hate scars the soul and distorts the personality.”

92. “I am still convinced that nonviolence is both the most practically sound and morally excellent way to grapple with the age-old problem of racial injustice.”

93. “I think the inconveniences of a segregated education are much greater than the inconveniences of busing students so that they can get an integrated quality education.”

94. “It is not a sign of weakness, but a sign of high maturity, to rise to the level of self-criticism.”

95. “The poor in our countries have been shut out of our minds and driven from the mainstream of our societies, because we have allowed them to become invisible.”

96. “I would rather be a man of conviction than a man of conformity.”

97. “I often feel like saying, when I hear the question ‘People aren’t ready,’ that it’s like telling a person who is trying to swim, ‘Don’t jump in that water until you learn how to swim.’ When actually you will never learn how to swim until you get in the water. And I think people have to have an opportunity to develop themselves and govern themselves.”

98. “We are bound together in a single garment of destiny.”

99. “True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.”

100. “Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it.”

101. “In order to love your enemies, you must begin by analyzing self.”

102. “Those of us who love peace must organize as effectively as the war hawks. As they spread the propaganda of war, we must spread the propaganda of peace.”

103. “The comfortable, the entrenched, the privileged cannot continue to tremble at the prospect of change in the status quo.”

104. “Before you finish eating breakfast in the morning, you’ve depended on more than half of the world.”

105. “You know, a lot of people don’t love themselves. And they go through life with deep and haunting emotional conflicts. So the length of life means that you must love yourself. And you know what loving yourself also means? It means that you’ve got to accept yourself.”

Come and share your favorite Martin Luther King Jr. quotes in our We Are Teachers HELPLINE group on Facebook.

Plus, check out our favorite Martin Luther King Jr. books and activities.