Martin Luther King, Jr. Military Quotes

• You don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Inspirational, Positive, Faith

  Mother Jones Magazine, Vol.16, No.3, p.77, May - June 1991.

• A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Change, Uplifting, Spiritual

  Beyond Vietnam -- A Time to Break Silence, Delivered 4 April 1967, Riverside Church, New York City

• A nation that will keep people in slavery for 244 years will "thingify" them and make them things. And therefore, they will exploit them and poor people generally economically. And a nation that will exploit economically will have to have foreign investments and everything else, and it will have to use its military might to protect them. All of these problems are tied together. What I'm saying today is that we must go from this convention and say, "America, you must be born again!"

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Wisdom, Military, Years

• If a man hasn't discovered something that he will die for, he isn't fit to live.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Inspirational, Death, Faith

  Martin Luther King (Jr.), Alex Ayres (1993). “The Wisdom of Martin Luther King, Jr”, Plume

• A time comes when silence is betrayal. That time has come for us in relation to Vietnam. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift, is approaching spiritual death.I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Uplifting, Spiritual, Betrayal

  Beyond Vietnam -- A Time to Break Silence, Delivered 4 April 1967, Riverside Church, New York City

• The great military leaders of the past have gone, their empires have crumbled and burned to ashes. But the empire of Jesus, built solidly and majestically on the foundation of love, is still growing.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Jesus, Military, Past

  Martin Luther King (Jr.) (2012). “A Gift of Love: Sermons from Strength to Love and Other Preachings”, p.54, Beacon Press

• War is the greatest plague that can afflict mankind... Any scourge is preferable to it.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Military, War, Mankind

• I am convinced that it is one of the most unjust wars that has ever been fought in the history of the world. Our involvement in the war in Vietnam has torn up the Geneva Accord. It has strengthened the military-industrial complex; it has strengthened the forces of reaction in our nation. It has put us against the self-determination of a vast majority of the Vietnamese people, and put us in the position of protecting a corrupt regime that is stacked against the poor.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Determination, Military, War

• Millions of citizens are deeply disturbed that the military-industrial complex too often shapes national policy, but they do not want to be considered unpatriotic.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Military, Citizens, Shapes

  Martin Luther King Jr. (1963). “Strength to Love”

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