Martin Luther King, Jr.

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.

We aren't engaged in any negative protest and in any negative arguments with anybody. We are saying that we are determined to be men. We are determined to be people. We are saying that we are God's children. And that we don't have to live like we are forced to live.

Keep feeling the need for being first. But I want you to be the first in love. I want you to be the first in moral excellence. I want you to be the first in generosity.

We must have the faith that things will work out somehow, that God will make a way for us when there seems no way.

We are out to defeat injustice and not white persons who may be unjust.

We can walk through the darkest night with the radiant conviction that all things work together for the good.

We aren't going to let any mace stop us. We are masters in our nonviolent movement in disarming police forces; they don't know what to do.

One of the most persistent ambiguities that we face is that everybody talks about peace as a goal. However, it does not take sharpest-eyed sophistication to discern that while everbody talks about peace, peace has become practically nobody's business among the power-wielders. Many men cry Peace! Peace! but they refuse to do the things that make for peace.

Many men cry Peace! Peace! but they refuse to do the things that make for peace.

We still have a choice today: nonviolence coesistence or violent coannihilation.

"I criticize America because I love her. I want her to stand as a moral example to the world."

But there is another way. And that is to organize mass non-violent resistance based on the principle of love. It seems to me that this is the only way as our eyes look to the future. As we look out across the years and across the generations, let us develop and move right here. We must discover the power of love, the power, the redemptive power of love. And when we discover that we will be able to make of this old world a new world. We will be able to make men better. Love is the only way.

Agape is something of the understanding, creative, redemptive goodwill for all men. It is a love that seeks nothing in return. It is an overflowing love; it's what theologians would call the love of God working in the lives of men. And when you rise to love on this level, you begin to love men, not because they are likeable, but because God loves them.

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. But not only that: Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi.

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?

Men often hate each other because they fear each other; they fear each other because they don't know each other; they don't know each other because they can not communicate; they can not communicate because they are separated.

Knowledge is a process of piling up facts; wisdom lies in their simplification.

If you succumb to the temptation of using violence in the struggle, unborn generations will be the recipients of a long and desolate night of bitterness, and your chief legacy to the future will be an endless reign of meaningless chaos.

The only weapon that we have in our hands this evening is the weapon of protest. That's all.

If you have not discovered something you are willing to die for, then you are not fit to live.

Unity has never meant uniformity.