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Martin Luther King Jr Quotes

Browse 164 quotes about Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King Jr Quotes

“If you are going to hide yourself and you will not stand against the work of the bad people, you have given them an endorsement.”

TruthLeadershipWorkJusticeLibertyFood For ThoughtIsraelmore AyivorLeadersBadBad PeopleToxic PeopleMartin Luther King JrMartin LutherMartin Luther KingLiberateEndorsementEndorse
Book:Leaders' Frontpage: Leadership Insights from 21 Martin Luther King Jr. Thoughts
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“Through Jimi Hendrix's music you can almost see the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and of Martin Luther King Junior, the beginnings of the Berlin Wall, Yuri Gagarin in space, Fidel Castro and Cuba, the debut of Spiderman, Martin Luther King Junior’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech, Ford Mustang cars, anti-Vietnam protests, Mary Quant designing the mini-skirt, Indira Gandhi becoming the Prime Minister of India, four black students sitting down at a whites-only lunch counter in Greensboro North Carolina, President Johnson pushing the Civil Rights Act, flower children growing their hair long and practicing free love, USA-funded IRA blowing up innocent civilians on the streets and in the pubs of Great Britain, Napalm bombs being dropped on the lush and carpeted fields of Vietnam, a youth-driven cultural revolution in Swinging London, police using tear gas and billy-clubs to break up protests in Chicago, Mods and Rockers battling on Brighton Beach, Native Americans given the right to vote in their own country, the United Kingdom abolishing the death penalty, and the charismatic Argentinean Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara. It’s all in Jimi’s absurd and delirious guitar riffs.”

Martin Luther King JrBerlin WallI Have A Dream SpeechFidel CastroKennedy AssassinationSixties CultureJimi HendrixMini SkirtYuri Gagarin
Book:Wrong Planet - Searching for your Tribe
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“Mrs. Clinton, speaking to a black church audience on Martin Luther King Day last year, did describe President George W. Bush as treating the Congress of the United States like 'a plantation,' adding in a significant tone of voice that 'you know what I mean ...' She did not repeat this trope, for some reason, when addressing the electors of Iowa or New Hampshire. She's willing to ring the other bell, though, if it suits her. But when an actual African-American challenger comes along, she rather tends to pout and wince at his presumption (or did until recently).”

PoliticsUnited StatesRacismHypocrisyAfrican AmericansIowaMartin Luther King JrNew HampshireBarack ObamaHillary ClintonGeorge W Bush2008United States Elections 2008Plantation
Author:Christopher Hitchens
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“Don’t complain of terrible circumstances. It has been proven several times that they are the sources of celebrated trophies.”

LeadershipCircumstancesTerribleFood For ThoughtIsraelmore AyivorComplainingCelebrateLeadersTrophiesMartin Luther King JrMartin LutherMartin Luther KingCircumstanceComplaintTrophySeveralComplainsSeveral TimesCelebrated Trophies
Book:Leaders' Frontpage: Leadership Insights from 21 Martin Luther King Jr. Thoughts
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“The strongest storms make the best sailors. The strongest games make the best players. Tougher challenges make the best leaders.”

PlayGamesStrongChallengesLeadershipStruggleFootballHard WorkToughStrongerStriveFood For ThoughtIsraelmore AyivorStrongestLeadersSailChallengeWork HardSailorGameStrugglesMartin Luther King JrMartin LutherMartin Luther KingPlayersSailorsTougherToughestBest Player
Book:Leaders' Frontpage: Leadership Insights from 21 Martin Luther King Jr. Thoughts
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“1) “How did I end up down this rabbit hole of being obsessed with men on the DL (down-low)? Why did I prefer playing more in the straight arena with the closet cases (as they were called in my day) and the bisexual men over the gay ones?” 2) “We didn’t identify in my day; you were either gay, bisexual, or straight. People will always label others or pigeonhole them without even knowing for sure who they really are. They presumably stereotype and judge just by your outward appearance.” 3) “It wasn't until the seventh grade that Sister Gloria would be my social studies teacher, and I began leaning more towards being an extrovert than the anxious introvert that I was. All the accolades go to her. She lit the flame under my ass that would be the catalyst for my advocacy. Her podium, located front and center of the classroom, became ground zero for me and where I found my voice.” 4) “Their taunting was my kryptonite. My peers hated me for no other reason than the fact that they thought I was gay. I was only thirteen and often wondered how they knew who I was before I did.” 5) “Evangelical Christian Anita Bryant (First Lady of Religious Bigotry), along with her minions, led a crusade against the LGBTQ community back in 1977 and said we were trying to recruit children and that ‘Homosexuals are human garbage.’ My first thoughts were, how unchristian and deplorable of her to even say something like that, not to mention, to make it her life’s mission promoting hate.” 6) “Are there any more Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. kind of Christians in this country today? Dr. King knew about his friend’s homosexuality and arrest. Being a religious man and a pastor, Dr. King could have cast judgment and shunned Bayard Rustin like so many other religious leaders did at the time. But he didn’t. That, to me, is the true meaning of being a Christian. He loved Bayard unconditionally and was unbiased towards his sexual orientation. Dr. King was not a counterfeit Christian and practiced what he preached—and that, along with remembering what Jesus had said, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself,’ is the bottom line to Christianity and all faiths.” 7) “We are all God’s children! That is what I was taught in Catholic school. God doesn’t make mistakes—it’s as simple as that. Love is love—period! I don’t need anyone’s validation or approval, I define myself.” 8) “You will bake our cakes, you will provide us our due healthcare, you will do our joint tax returns, and yes, you will bless our unions, too. Otherwise, you cannot call yourselves Christians or even Americans, for that matter.” 9) “The torch has been passed. But we must never forget the LGBT pioneers that have come before and how they fought in the streets for our lives. Never forget the Stonewall riots of 1969 nor the social stigma put upon us during the HIV/AIDS epidemic from its onset in the early 1980s. Remember how many died alone because nobody cared. Finally, keep in mind how we were all pathologized and labeled in the medical books until 1973.”

ChristianGayBullyingLgbtqEvangelicalMartin Luther King JrMemoirsReligious BigotryDlDown Low
Author:MICHAEL CAPUTO
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“The leader’s commandment is made up of pledges to solve local and global problems, and not to create more problems to add to the existing ones.”

LeadershipLeaderFood For ThoughtIsraelmore AyivorLeadersProblemsGlobalizationCreatePledgeGlobalMartin Luther King JrMartin LutherMartin Luther KingLocalCommandmentPledges
Book:Leaders' Frontpage: Leadership Insights from 21 Martin Luther King Jr. Thoughts
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“Together with a number of Negro and white reporters, I attended [Martin Luther] King's packed church. He spoke simply, emphasizing the nonviolent nature of the struggle, and told his congregation: "We are concerned not merely to win justice in the buses but rather to behave in a new and different way--to be nonviolent so that we may remove injustice itself, both from society and from ourselves. This is a struggle which we cannot lose, no matter what the apparent outcome, if we ourselves succeed in becoming better and more loving people.”

LoveStruggleSelf ImprovementResistanceCivil RightsNonviolenceMartin Luther King JrMlkMontgomery Bus Boycott
Book:Down the Line: The Collected Writings of Bayard Rustin
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“Sometimes the only things preventing your dreams from becoming realities is the long time it is taking you to start.”

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Book:Leaders' Frontpage: Leadership Insights from 21 Martin Luther King Jr. Thoughts
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“A leader’s goal is to improve on upon the past and if your goal is to remain where you are, doing the same things you have done times and times again, you can’t lead.”

GoalLeadershipLeaderInnovationFood For ThoughtIsraelmore AyivorImprovementLeadersNew ThingsInnovativeMartin Luther King JrLeadership TraitsMartin LutherMartin Luther KingOld ThingsImproveLead PeopleInnovateNew SkillsInnovative IdeasOld Skills
Book:Leaders' Frontpage: Leadership Insights from 21 Martin Luther King Jr. Thoughts
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“Until you step in the game and influence the skills, you will never change the score line.”

GamesLeadershipResultsSkillsFood For ThoughtIsraelmore AyivorGoalsScoreLeadersGameSkillfulSkillMartin Luther King JrMartin LutherMartin Luther KingStepScoresWin Your GameStep OutScore A GoalStep InPlay Your GameScoreline
Book:Leaders' Frontpage: Leadership Insights from 21 Martin Luther King Jr. Thoughts
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“I understand we all have our differences. But while learning about history I've read about white people coming together, Jews coming together, Spanish coming together, different cultures and religions understanding and coming together despite their differences. Slavery was never something that shocked me. What shocks me is how black people have not yet overcome the odds and we're such strong smart people. Why we can't just stand together?”

WorldPoliticsLove QuotesAfrican AmericanBlack PeopleOne LoveBlack Lives MatterPeace On EarthJourney Of LifeMartin Luther King JrPath Of LifeUnderstanding Oneself And OthersUnity Of All PeopleTogether We RiseOpen Your EyesBob Marley2016 QuotesRise Up And Do It AgainHiphopMessages Of Hope
Author:Jonathan Anthony Burkett
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“HE remembered looking "agape" in his encyclopedia volume after he read Dr. King's speech in the DEFENDER. The newspaper ran the address in full after the reverend's appearance at Cornell College. If Elwood had come across the word before, through all those years of skipping around the book, it hadn't stuck in his head. King described "agape" as a divine love operating in the heart of man. A selfless love, an incandescent love, the highest there is. He called upon his Negro audience to cultivate that pure love for their oppressors, that it might carry them to the other side of the struggle. Elwood tried to get his head around it, now that it was no longer the abstraction floating in his head last spring. It was real now. "Throw us in jail and we will still love you. Bomb our homes and threaten our children, and, as difficult as it is, we will still love you. Send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our communities after midnight hours, and drag us out onto some wayside road, and beat us and leave us half-dead, and we will still love you. But be ye assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer, and one day we will win our freedom. The capacity to suffer. Elwood--all the Nickel boys--existed in the capacity. Breathed in it, ate in it, dreamed in it. That was their lives now. Otherwise they would have perished. The beatings, the rapes, the unrelenting winnowing of themselves. They endured. But to love those who destroyed them? To make that leap? "We will meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will and we will still love you." Elwood shook his head. What a thing to ask. What an impossible thing.”

LoveLove QuotesCivil RightsBlack Lives MatterMartin Luther King JrAgapeAgape LoveCornell College
Book:The Nickel Boys
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“Most people who were educated have become the "problems" instead of problem solvers.”

ProblemLeadershipEducationCollegeDegreesSolutionsUniversityFood For ThoughtIsraelmore AyivorEducatedLeadersProblemsProblem SolvingMartin Luther King JrMartin LutherMartin Luther KingProblem SolversProblem Solver
Book:Leaders' Frontpage: Leadership Insights from 21 Martin Luther King Jr. Thoughts
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“A self-leader looks around for problems, and then thinks deep to device solutions to them.”

LeadershipSolutionsFood For ThoughtIsraelmore AyivorLeadersProblemsProblem SolvingMartin Luther King JrMartin LutherMartin Luther KingProblem SolversSelf LeadershipSelf LeadersSelf LeaderProblem Solver
Book:Leaders' Frontpage: Leadership Insights from 21 Martin Luther King Jr. Thoughts
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“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.”

RaceSexismCivil Rights MovementMartin Luther King JrIdentity PoliticsPerjuryWhite PeopleUnited States Elections 2008Skin ColourUnited States SenateEthnologyCaucasian Race
Author:Christopher Hitchens
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“The leader’s joy is the success of change, the evidence of progress and the actualization of a better life.”

JoyChangeLeadershipLeaderProgressTrumpAchievementEvidenceClintonFood For ThoughtIsraelmore AyivorLeadersBetter LifeAchievementsMartin Luther King JrMartin LutherMartin Luther KingObamaActualizationActualizeMacron
Book:Leaders' Frontpage: Leadership Insights from 21 Martin Luther King Jr. Thoughts
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“People who swim very well in troubled waters are respected and celebrated than those who swim excellently in calm waters.”

WaterLeadershipRiskTroubleAdventureExcellenceFood For ThoughtCalmIsraelmore AyivorExcellentSwimLeadersSwimmingVentureMartin Luther King JrRisk TakingMartin LutherMartin Luther KingExcelWatersTroubled WatersSwimmersTrouble WatersCalm WatersH20
Book:Leaders' Frontpage: Leadership Insights from 21 Martin Luther King Jr. Thoughts
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“Racism is a philosophy based on a contempt for life. It is the arrogant assertion that one race is the center of value and object of devotion, before which other races must kneel in submission. It is the absurd dogma that one race is responsible for all the progress of history and alone can assure the progress of the future. Racism is total estrangement. It separates not only bodies, but minds and spirits. Inevitably it descends to inflicting spiritual or physical homicide upon the out-group.”

RaceRacismMartin Luther King JrRace Relations In America
Book:Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?
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“Ensure you have done each day’s portion of the heavy responsibilities resting on you. Never delay your success!”

LeadershipResponsibilityFood For ThoughtIsraelmore AyivorLeadersProcrastinationDelayMartin Luther King JrMartin LutherMartin Luther KingTaskDaily RoutinesResponsibilitiesProcrastinateHeavy Duty
Book:Leaders' Frontpage: Leadership Insights from 21 Martin Luther King Jr. Thoughts
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“Don’t always complain the way isn’t there. If you can’t find the way, create it.”

WayLeadershipLeaderPathInnovationMethodFood For ThoughtIsraelmore AyivorComplainingInventionLeadersInventorRoadSolutionMartin Luther King JrMartin LutherMartin Luther KingComplainStepInnovateComplaintPathwayInnovatorNew ThingCreate The Way
Book:Leaders' Frontpage: Leadership Insights from 21 Martin Luther King Jr. Thoughts
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“Be the initiator of things you wish to see, but can’t see. Be the originator of things you wish you feel but can’t feel.”

ChangeLeadershipInnovationFood For ThoughtIsraelmore AyivorInventionLeadersFeelSeeInitiateMartin Luther King JrMartin LutherMartin Luther KingInnovateBe The Change You Wish To SeeInventInnovatorOriginateOriginator
Book:Leaders' Frontpage: Leadership Insights from 21 Martin Luther King Jr. Thoughts
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“Be passionate about your dreams and never give sleep to your eyes until your good becomes better and your better becomes the best.”

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Book:Leaders' Frontpage: Leadership Insights from 21 Martin Luther King Jr. Thoughts
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“Until you let go of that bitterness in your heart, it will find a comfortable place to destroy your dreams, your sight and most times, your sleep.”

LoveHeartHateLeadershipSleepDreamsComfortableHatredSightAngerAngryFood For ThoughtIsraelmore AyivorBitterBitternessLeadersLoverLovingDream BigBig DreamsHatersMartin Luther King JrMartin LutherMartin Luther King
Book:Leaders' Frontpage: Leadership Insights from 21 Martin Luther King Jr. Thoughts
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“You will never be rewarded for the dreams you slept over day in day out. You will be rewarded for dreams you stay awake and achieved.”

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Book:Leaders' Frontpage: Leadership Insights from 21 Martin Luther King Jr. Thoughts
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“Calamities reveal your capabilities. Take note of this and when times get odd, prepare and shine.”

SuccessLeadershipDarkDarknessAdversityFood For ThoughtIsraelmore AyivorOddLeadersCalamityStarShineMartin Luther King JrMartin LutherMartin Luther KingPrepareBad WeatherBad DaysArise And ShineCalamitiesBad Events
Book:Leaders' Frontpage: Leadership Insights from 21 Martin Luther King Jr. Thoughts
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“Rev. [Martin Luther] King continued, chanting, singing his prophetic litany. We were one people, indivisible in the sight of God, responsible to each other and for each other. We, the black people, the most displaced, the poorest, the most maligned and scourged, we had the glorious task of reclaiming the soul and saving the honor of the country. We, the most hated, must take hate into our hands and by the miracle of love, turn loathing into love. We, the most feared and apprehensive, must take fear and by love, change it into hope. We, who die daily in large and small ways, must take the demon death and turn it into Life. His head was thrown back and his words rolled out with the rumbling of thunder. We had to pray without ceasing and work without tiring. We had to know evil will not forever stay on the throne. That right, dashed to the ground, will rise, rise again and again.”

LoveAmericaHateCivil RightsGood And EvilAfrican AmericansBlacksWhitesMartin Luther King Jr
Book:The Heart of a Woman
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“You can lead if you can serve. You can serve when you can love. You can love when you are graced. The truth is that God knows love will be needed in volumes, this is why he made his grace abundant. Leaders are lovers. Misleaders are haters!”

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Author:Israelmore Ayivor
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“This fact is that the heaviest and more burdensome load ever is neither the cement bag nor the iron rod. It is hatred.”

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Book:Leaders' Frontpage: Leadership Insights from 21 Martin Luther King Jr. Thoughts
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“You can’t afford to limit your joy. It has been proven several times that angry people are never happy people.”

HappinessJoyHateLeadershipHatredAngerAngryFood For ThoughtIsraelmore AyivorHappyGladBitterLimitationBitternessLeadersJoyfulHatersLimitationsHappy PeopleMartin Luther King JrMartin LutherMartin Luther KingHaterLimitTimesSeveralSeveral Times
Book:Leaders' Frontpage: Leadership Insights from 21 Martin Luther King Jr. Thoughts
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“Stick to love; it is heavy and it will carry you. Avoid hatred; it is heavy and you have to carry it. It is left to you to make your choice.”

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Book:Leaders' Frontpage: Leadership Insights from 21 Martin Luther King Jr. Thoughts
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“Never let hatred give you an escort. It will drag your attention from all fortunes along the way.”

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Book:Leaders' Frontpage: Leadership Insights from 21 Martin Luther King Jr. Thoughts
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