What's Your Favorite Martin Luther King, Jr. Quote?

Impact

On Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday, we ask you to share your favorite MLK quotes.

During the less than 13 years of Dr. King's leadership of the American Civil Rights Movement (December 1955 – April 1968), African Americans achieved more genuine progress toward racial equality they had in the previous 350 years. Dr. King is regarded as America’s pre-eminent advocate of nonviolence and one of the greatest nonviolent leaders in world history.

King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, Nobel Peace Prize lecture, and “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” are among the most widely studied orations in American history. King used the power of words and acts of nonviolent resistance, such as protests and grassroots organizing, to achieve seemingly-impossible goals.

Here are two of our favorite King quotes:

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly." - Letter from a Birmingham Jail (1963)

"Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time — the need for mankind to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to violence and oppression. Civilization and violence are antithetical concepts… Sooner or later all the people of the world will have to discover a way to live together in peace, and thereby transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. If this is to be achieved, man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love." - Nobel Prize acceptance speech (1964)

SHARE your favorite MLK quote and tell us why you find it inspiring.

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons