Martin Luther King, Jr. Quotes About Today

• I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Inspirational, Life, Dream

  "I Have a Dream". Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Address Delivered at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, kinginstitute.stanford.edu. August 28, 1963.

• Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Inspirational, Life, Motivational

  "Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

• If you lose hope, somehow you lose the vitality that keeps moving, you lose that courage to be, that quality that helps you go on in spite of it all. And so today I still have a dream.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Inspiring, Moving On, Dream

  Martin Luther King (Jr.) (1968). “The trumpet of conscience”, Harpercollins

• We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation. This may well be mankind's last chance to choose between chaos and community.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Peace, Community, Choices

• One of the great liabilities of history is that all too many people fail to remain awake through great periods of social change. Every society has its protectors of status quo and its fraternities of the indifferent who are notorious for sleeping through revolutions. Today, our very survival depends on our ability to stay awake, to adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant and to face the challenge of change.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Inspirational, Change, Sleep

• Even when the polls are open to all, Negroes have shown themselves too slow to exercise their voting privileges. There must be a concerted effort on the part of Negro leaders to arouse their people from their apathetic indifference.... In the past, apathy was a moral failure. Today, it is a form of moral and political suicide.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Suicide, Exercise, Past

  Martin Luther King (Jr.) (1964). “A Martin Luther King Treasury”

• We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there "is" such a thing as being too late. This is no time for apathy or complacency. This is a time for vigorous and postive action.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Motivational, Today, Complacency

  "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence". Speech at Riverside Church in New York City, April 4, 1967.

• Our nation was born in genocide when it embraced the doctrine that the original American, the Indian, was an inferior race. ... We are perhaps the only nation which tried as a matter of national policy to wipe out its indigenous population. Moreover, we elevated that tragic experience into a noble crusade. Indeed, even today we have not permitted ourselves to reject or to feel remorse for this shameful episode.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Race, Population, Doctrine

• The recent statement of your executive committee are the sentiments of my own heart and I found myself in full accord when I read its opening lines: "A time comes when silence is betrayal." That time has come for us in relation to Vietnam. 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.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Betrayal, Night, Agony

  "A Time to Break Silence". Speech at a meeting of Clergy and Laity Concerned at Riverside Church in New York City, www.deanza.edu. April 04, 1967.

• I imagine you already know that I am much more socialistic in my economic theory than capitalistic. And yet I am not so opposed to capitalism that I have failed to see its relative merits. It started out with a noble and high motive, to block the trade monopolies of nobles, but like most human systems it falls victim to the very thing it was revolting against. So today capitalism has outlived its usefulness. It has brought about a system that takes necessities from the masses to give luxuries to the classes.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Block, Fall, Class

• We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with a lost opportunity. . . . Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words, 'Too late.' ... Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for a new world.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Beautiful, Struggle, Procrastination

  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

• There is little hope for us until we become tough-minded enough to break loose from the shackles of prejudice, half-truths, and downright ignorance. The shape of the world today does not permit us the luxury of soft mindedness. A nation or a civilization that continues to produce soft minded men purchases its own spiritual death on an installment plan.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Spiritual, Ignorance, Men

• As a young man with most of my life ahead of me, I decided early to give my life to something eternal and absolute. Not to these little gods that are here today and gone tomorrow. But to God who is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Men, Yesterday, Giving

  "Rediscovering Lost Values". Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Sermon at Detroit's Second Baptist Church, kinginstitute.stanford.edu. February 28, 1954.

• I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed, without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today – my own government.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Government, Voice, Violence

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

• For all of us today, the battle is in our hands. The road ahead is not altogether a smooth one. There are no broad highways to lead us easily and inevitably to quick solutions. We must keep going.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Educational, Persistence, Hands

  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (2013). “The Essential Martin Luther King, Jr.: "I Have a Dream" and Other Great Writings”, p.145, Beacon Press

• We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Climate, Breaking Silence, Today

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

• If the church of today does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authentic ring, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Inspirational, Loyalty, Church

  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (2013). “The Essential Martin Luther King, Jr.: "I Have a Dream" and Other Great Writings”, p.103, Beacon Press

• Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism... We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Lying, Hero, Racism

  "Beyond Vietnam". Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Speech at Riverside Church in New York City, kinginstitute.stanford.edu. April 4, 1967.

• The nation is sick; trouble is in the land, confusion all around...But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough can you see the stars. And I see God working in this period of the twentieth century. Something is happening in our world. The masses of people are rising up. And wherever they are assembled today, whether they are in Johannesburg, South Africa; Nairobi, Kenya; Accra, Ghana; New York City; Atlanta, Georgia; Jackson, Mississippi; or Memphis, Tennessee, the cry is always the same: 'We want to be free.'

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  New York, Stars, Dark

  I've Been to the Mountaintop, delivered 3 April 1968, Mason Temple (Church of God in Christ Headquarters), Memphis, Tennessee

• We are faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words ‘Too Late’.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Procrastination, Civilization, Thieves

• Today, our very survival depends on our ability to stay awake, to adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant and to face the challenge of change.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Change, Ideas, Challenges

  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (2013). “"In a Single Garment of Destiny": A Global Vision of Justice”, p.19, Beacon Press

• We must see the great distinction between a reform movement and a revolutionary movement. We are called upon to raise certain basic questions about the whole society . . . . What America must be told today is that she must be born again. The whole structure of American life must be changed.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  America, Reform, Movement

• I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, sons of former slaves and sons of former slave-owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day, even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into a oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by content of their character. I have a dream today!

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Dream, Children, Character

  Speech at Civil Rights March,Washington, D.C., 28 Aug. 1963

• It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence in this world; it's nonviolence or nonexistence. That is where we are today.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Choices, World, Today

  I've Been to the Mountaintop, delivered 3 April 1968, Mason Temple (Church of God in Christ Headquarters), Memphis, Tennessee

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