Martin Luther King Jr Quotes
Please enjoy our collection of quotes by Martin Luther King and other famous leaders on topics that were important to to work and message of Dr. King
Quotes about Equality
(Including I Have a Dream Quotes)
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.
Martin Luther King Jr., I Have a Dream, 1963.
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.
Martin Luther King Jr., I Have a Dream, 1963.
All men are born equally free.
Salmon P. Chase
All men are created equal, it is only men themselves who place themselves above equality.
David Allan Coe
Coming generations will learn equality from poverty, and love from woes.
Khalil Gibran
Equality is the soul of liberty; there is, in fact, no liberty without it.
Frances Wright
Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Abraham Lincoln
From the equality of rights springs identity of our highest interests; you cannot subvert your neighbor's rights without striking a dangerous blow at your own.
Carl Schurz
I know my country has not perfected itself. At times, we've struggled to keep the promise of liberty and equality for all of our people. We've made our share of mistakes, and there are times when our actions around the world have not lived up to our best intentions.
Barack Obama
“All the citizens of a state cannot be equally powerful, but they may be equally free”
Voltaire
Quotes about Education
To save man from the morass of propaganda, in my opinion, is one of the chief aims of education. Education must enable one to sift and weigh evidence, to discern the true from the false, the real from the unreal, and the facts from the fiction.
Martin Luther King, Jr., The Purpose of Education
The function of education, therefore, is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. But education which stops with efficiency may prove the greatest menace to society.
Martin Luther King, Jr., The Purpose of Education
Intelligence plus character--that is the goal of true education.
Martin Luther King, Jr., The Purpose of Education
He who opens a school door, closes a prison.
Victor Hugo
Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail. What you gain at one end you lose at the other. It's like feeding a dog on his own tail. It won't fatten the dog.
Mark Twain
A human being is not attaining his full heights until he is educated.
Horace Mann
Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.
Edward Everett
Whatever is good to know is difficult to learn.
Greek Proverb
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and will never be.
Thomas Jefferson
Education is more than a luxury; it is a responsibility that society owes to itself.
Robin Cook
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
Aristotle
Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.
Mahatma Gandhi
Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.
Nelson Mandela
Quotes on Racism
Let us all hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away, and that in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty.
Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail
Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity.
Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail
When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, militarism and economic exploitation are incapable of being conquered.
Martin Luther King, Jr., Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam
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.
Martin Luther King, Jr., Nobel Price Acceptance Speech
“Hating people because of their color is wrong. And it doesn't matter which color does the hating. It's just plain wrong.”
― Muhammad Ali
“Everybody is a book of blood; wherever we're opened, we're red.”
― Clive Barker, Books of Blood 1-3
“Until the philosophy which hold one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned...
Everything is war. Me say war.
That until the're no longer 1st class and 2nd class citizens of any nation...
Until the color of a man's skin is of
no more significa...nce than the color of his eyes, me say war. That until the basic human rights are equally guaranteed to all without regard to race me say war!”
― Bob Marley
“Yeah, I love being famous. It's almost like being white, y'know?”
― Chris Rock
“You can't hate the roots of a tree and not hate the tree.”
― Malcolm X
“Our true nationality is mankind.”
― H.G. Wells
“Ignorance and prejudice are the handmaidens of propaganda. Our mission, therefore, is to confront ignorance with knowledge, bigotry with tolerance, and isolation with the outstretched hand of generosity. Racism can, will, and must be defeated.”
― Kofi Annan
“even though we survived through the struggle that made us, we still look at ourselves through the eyes of people that hate us”
― Immortal Technique
“Whoever debases others is debasing himself.”
― James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time
“Racism is man's gravest threat to man - the maximum of hatred for a minimum of reason.”
Abraham J. Heschel
“It demands great spiritual resilience not to hate the hater whose foot is on your neck, and an even greater miracle of perception and charity not to teach your child to hate."
James Arthur Baldwin
Be nice to whites, they need you to rediscover their humanity. ~Desmond Tutu
Racism isn't born, folks, it's taught. I have a two-year-old son. You know what he hates? Naps! End of list. ~Dennis Leary
If a white man falls off a chair drunk, it's just a drunk. If a Negro does, it's the whole damn Negro race. ~Bill Cosby
When we're unemployed, we're called lazy; when the whites are unemployed it's called a depression. ~Jesse Jackson
I swear to the Lord
I still can't see
Why Democracy means
Everybody but me.
~Langston Hughes, The Black Man Speaks
Quotes on Nonviolence
At the center of non-violence stands the principle of love.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Nonviolence means avoiding not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. You not only refuse to shoot a man, but you refuse to hate him.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching
spiritual death.
Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, 1967.
Nonviolent action, the Negro saw, was the way to supplement, not replace,
the progress of change. It was the way to divest himself of passivity without arraying himself in vindictive force.
Martin Luther King, Jr., Why We Can't Wait, 1964.
I have nothing new to teach the world. Truth and Non-violence are as old as the hills. All I have done is to try experiments in both on as vast a scale as I could.
Mohandas Gandhi
Non-violence is the greatest force at the disposal of mankind. It is mightier than the mightiest weapon of destruction devised by the ingenuity of man.
Mohandas Gandhi
There is no such thing as defeat in non-violence.
Cesar Chavez
“Non-violence is not inaction. It is not discussion. It is not for the timid or weak... Non-violence is hard work. It is the willingness to sacrifice. It is the patience to win.”
Cesar Chavez
Quotes about Poverty
The curse of poverty has no justification in our age. It is socially as cruel and blind as the practice of cannibalism at the dawn of
civilization... The time has come for us to civilize ourselves by the total, direct and immediate abolition of poverty.
Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, 1967.
Poverty is the worst form of violence.
Mohandas Gandhi
Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty.
Mother Teresa
The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty, and all forms of human life.
John F. Kennedy
The community which has neither poverty nor riches will always have the noblest principles.
Plato
Poverty is the mother of crime.
Marcus Aurelius
“Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.”
― Aristotle
Quotes about Martin Luther King Jr
“For years, I declined to fill in the form for my Senate press credential that asked me to state my 'race,' unless I was permitted to put 'human.' The form had to be completed under penalty of perjury, so I could not in conscience put 'white,' which is not even a color let alone a 'race,' and I sternly declined to put 'Caucasian,' which is an exploded term from a discredited ethnology. Surely the essential and unarguable core of King's campaign was the insistence that pigmentation was a false measure: a false measure of mankind (yes, mankind) and an inheritance from a time of great ignorance and stupidity and cruelty, when one drop of blood could make you 'black.”
― Christopher Hitchens
“The self-congratulatory popular account insists that Dr. King called on the nation to fully accept its own creed, and the walls came a-tumbling down. This conventional narrative is soothing, moving, and politically acceptable, and has only the disadvantage of bearing no resemblance to what actually happened.”
― Timothy B. Tyson, Blood Done Sign My Name: A True Story
“Everyone knows, even the smallest kid knows about Martin Luther King Jr., can say his most famous moment was that 'I have a dream speech. No one can go further than one sentence. All we know is that this had a dream. We do not know what the dream was'.”
― Henry Loius Taylor
A lot of people are waiting for Martin Luther King or Mahatma Gandhi to come back — but they are gone. We are it. It is up to us. It is up to you.
― Marian Wright Edelman, as quoted in The Art of Winning Commitment : 10 Ways Leaders Can Engage Minds, Hearts, And Spirits (2004) by Dick Richards, p. 11
Buy a Copy of the I Have a Dream Speech |
I Have a Dream Speech DVD
Martin Luther King Jr. - I Have a Dream DVD on Amazon
"Perfect video for teaching"
Includes the full speech as well as an introduction to the civil right's movement and circumstances leading up to the famous march on Washington. |
Illustrated Hardcover
for Kids and Adults
I Have A Dream Illustrated Hardcover
Full I Have a Dream Speech with 14 original illustrations.
While Amazon says the reading level is ages 4 and up, this is not an abbreviated version and probably better for older children, adults and teachers reading to students who want illustrations. |
I Have a Dream & Other Speeches
I Have a Dream: Writings and Speeches That Changed the World, Special 75th Anniversary Edition (Paperback)
Best Collection of King's Most Popular Writings
Also includes his Nobel Prize acceptance speech; "My Trip to the Land of Gandhi"; "A Time to Break Silence," and more. |
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