Martin Luther King citations

Page 14

Discours de réception du prix Nobel de la paix, 1964

Discours de réception du prix Nobel de la paix, 1964

And it may well be that we will have to repent in this generation, not merely for the vitriolic words and the violent actions of the bad people who would bomb a church in Birmingham, Alabama but for the appalling silence and indifference of the good people who sit around and say wait on time.
en
Discours à l’université wesleyenne de l'Illinois, 1966

1960s, Letter from a Birmingham Jail (1963)
Contexte: I have consistently preached that nonviolence demands that the means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek. I have tried to make clear that it is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends. But now I must affirm that it is just as wrong, or perhaps even more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends.

Source: Strength to Love

1960s, (1963)

1960s, Cobo Center speech (1963)

1960s, Address on Courage (1965)
Contexte: Deep down in our nonviolent creed is the conviction that there are some things so dear, some things so precious, some things so eternally true that they’re worth dying for. And if a man happens to be 36 years old, as I happen to be, and some great truth stands before the door of his life, some great opportunity to stand up for that which is right, he’s afraid his home will get burned, or he’s afraid that he will lose his job, or he’s afraid that he will get shot or beat down by state troopers. He may go on and live until he’s 80, but he’s just as dead at 36 as he would be at 80. And the cessation of breathing in his life is merely the belated announcement of an earlier death of the spirit. He died...
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.
So we're going to stand up right here amid horses. We're going to stand up right here, in Alabama, amid the billy-clubs. We're going to stand up right here in Alabama amid police dogs, if they have them. We're going to stand up amid tear gas! We're going to stand up amid anything they can muster up, letting the world know that we are determined to be free!

1960s, Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence (1967)
Contexte: Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover, when the issues at hand seem as perplexing as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict, we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty; but we must move on.
And some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak.
Contexte: Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover, when the issues at hand seem as perplexing, as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict, we're always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty. But we must move on. Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony. But we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. And we must rejoice as well, for in all our history there has never been such a monumental dissent during a war, by the American people.

1960s, (1963)

1950s, Give Us the Ballot (1957)
Contexte: We must meet hate with love. We must meet physical force with soul force. There is still a voice crying out through the vista of time, saying: "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, pray for them that despitefully use you." Then, and only then, can you matriculate into the university of eternal life. That same voice cries out in terms lifted to cosmic proportions: "He who lives by the sword will perish by the sword." And history is replete with the bleached bones of nations that failed to follow this command. We must follow nonviolence and love.

1960s, (1963)

"An eye for an eye leaves everybody blind" is of indefinite origin, but has been disputably attributed to various figures, including Mahatma Gandhi. This variant describing it as an "old law" is attributed to King in The Words of Martin Luther King, Jr., (2008) http://books.google.com/books?id=irMxJS36904C&redir_esc=y by Coretta Scott King, Second Edition ; it also occurs in the credits of Spike Lee's movie Do the Right Thing (1989).
Disputed

1950s
Source: Montgomery Bus Boycott speech, at Holt Street Baptist Church (5 December 1955) http://www.blackpast.org/?q=1955-martin-luther-king-jr-montgomery-bus-boycott

A Usenet post https://groups.google.com/forum/#!original/alt.animals.ethics.vegetarian/dx5B6E7Px5Y/BqpR-Wun--IJ ( additional archive http://archive.is/nMSX8), from 15 Jan 2006, with Message-Id: YVuyf.2919$2x4.2240@trndny05 , from "penny", contains the full text of the quote, with NO mention of it being a quote, or MLK, or anything of the sort. That strongly suggests it is the original source, which was later mis-attributed to Martin Luther King, Jr.
Misattributed

1960s, Family Planning - A Special and Urgent Concern (1966)

As quoted in Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (1967)
1960s

1960s, The Quest for Peace and Justice (1964)

1960s, Address to Local 815, Teamsters and the Allied Trades Council (1967)

1960s, I've Been to the Mountaintop (1968)

Montgomery Bus Boycott speech, at Holt Street Baptist Church (5 December 1955) http://www.blackpast.org/?q=1955-martin-luther-king-jr-montgomery-bus-boycott
1950s
Variante: You know my friends, there comes a time when people get tired of being trampled by the iron feet of oppression. There comes a time my friends, when people get tired of being plunged across the abyss of humiliation, where they experience the bleakness of nagging despair. 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.

1950s, Rediscovering Lost Values (1954)
Source: Rediscovering Lost Values http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/kingpapers/article/rediscovering_lost_values/, Sermon delivered at Detroit's Second Baptist Church (28 February 1954)

1950s, Loving Your Enemies (Christmas 1957)

1960s, I've Been to the Mountaintop (1968)

"Social Justice and the Emerging New Age" address at the Herman W. Read Fieldhouse, Western Michigan University (18 December 1963)
1960s

The Measures of Man (1959)
1950s

1960s, Emancipation Proclamation Centennial Address (1962)

1960s, Family Planning - A Special and Urgent Concern (1966)

1950s, Conquering Self-centeredness (1957)

1950s, Rediscovering Lost Values (1954)