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Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But Im not concerned about that now. I just want to do Gods will. And Hes allowed me to go up to the mountain. And Ive looked over, and Ive seen the promised land. I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Let us therefore continue our triumphal march to the realization of the American dream. 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 that lead us easily and inevitably to quick solutions. We are still in for the season of suffering. How long? Not long. Because no lie can live forever. our God is marching on.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
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I feel that we will continue to have a non-violent movement, and we will continue to find the vast majority of Negroes committed to non-violence, at least as the best tactical approach and from a pragmatic point of view as the best strategy in dealing with the problem of racial injustice. Realism impels me to admit, however, that when there is justice and the pursuit of justice, violence appears, and where there is injustice and frustration, the potentialities for violence are greater, and I would like to strongly stress the point that the more we can achieve victories through non-violence, the more it will be possible to keep the non-violent discipline at the center of the movement. But the more we find individuals facing conditions of frustration, conditions of disappointment and seething despair as a result of the slow pace of things and the failure to change conditions, the more it will be possible for the apostles of violence to interfere.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
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The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
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I am coming to feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than the people of goodwill. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people. We must come to see that human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability. It comes through the tireless efforts and persistent work of men willing to be co-workers with God, and without this hard work time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, and forever realize that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy, and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Acceptance
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We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
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We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Age
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The quality, not the longevity, of one's life is what is important.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Belief
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There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Bravery
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We must build dikes of courage to hold back the flood of fear.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Character
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The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
-Martin Luther King, Jr., "Strength to Love" speech (1963)
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Community
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We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Death
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If a man hasn't discovered something that he will die for, he isn't fit to live.
-Martin Luther King, Jr., (speech; Detroit, Michigan), June 23, 1963
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Equality
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I have a dream, that 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 the content of their character. I have a dream today!
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Evil
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He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Excellence
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If a man is called to be a streetsweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great streetsweeper who did his job well.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Faith
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Faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the whole staircase.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Fanaticism
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The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Freedom
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Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
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When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of that old Negro spiritual, Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
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The Negro needs the white man to free him from his fears. The white man needs the Negro to free him from his guilt.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Future, The
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Occasionally in life there are those moments of unutterable fulfillment which cannot be completely explained by those symbols called words. Their meaning can only be articulated by the inaudible language of the heart. Such is the moment I am presently experiencing. I experience this high and joyous moment not for myself alone but for those devotees of nonviolence who have moved so courageously against the ramparts of racial injustice and who in the process have acquired a new estimate of their own human worth. Many of them are young and cultured. Others are middle aged and middle class. The majority are poor and untutored. But they are all united in the quiet conviction that it is better to suffer in dignity than to accept segregation in humiliation. These are the real heroes of the freedom struggle: they are the noble people for whom I accept the Nobel Peace Prize.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Goodness
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Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Greatness & Great Things
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Everybody can be great... because anybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Hate
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Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man's sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false, and the false with the true.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
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It's not only necessary to know how to go about loving your enemies, but also to go down into the question of why we should love our enemies. I think the first reason that we should love our enemies, and I think this was at the very center of Jesus' thinking, is this: that hate for hate only intensifies the existence of hate and evil in the universe. If I hit you and you hit me and I hit you back and you hit me back and go on, you see, that goes on ad infinitum. It just never ends. Somewhere somebody must have a little sense, and that's the strong person. The strong person is the person who can cut off the chain of hate, the chain of evil.
delivered at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, AL
-Martin Luther King, Jr., from sermon Loving Your Enemies, November 17, 1957
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There's another reason why you should love your enemies, and that is because hate distorts the personality of the hater. We usually think of what hate does for the individual hated or the individuals hated or the groups hated. But it is even more tragic, it is even more ruinous and injurious to the individual who hates. ... For the person who hates, the true becomes false and the false becomes true. That's what hate does.
-Martin Luther King, Jr., Loving Your Enemies (sermon), November 17, 1957
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Hell
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The hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who remain neutral in times of great moral conflict.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Help
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We may have all come on different ships, but we're in the same boat now.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Humanity
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Mankind must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Ignorance & Stupidity
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Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Joy, Excitement
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Occasionally in life there are those moments of unutterable fulfillment which cannot be completely explained by those symbols called words. Their meanings can only be articulated by the inaudible language of the heart.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Justice
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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.
-Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from the Birmingham Jail, April 16, 1963
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Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice. Justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love.
-Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, August 16, 1967
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In no sense do I advocate evading or defying the law ... That would lead to anarchy. An individual who breaks a law that his conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
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The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.
-Martin Luther King, Jr., Speech at the end of a four-day march from Selma to the state capitol in Montgomery, Alabama., March 25, 1965
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Law
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Law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
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It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Liberalism
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I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Love
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I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
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At the center of non-violence stands the principle of love.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Mind, the
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We must combine the toughness of the serpent with the softness of the dove, a tough mind and a tender heart.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Morals
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Morality cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. Judicial decrees may not change the heart, but they can restrain the heartless.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Obedience
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It is my hope that as the Negro plunges deeper into the quest for freedom and justice he will plunge even deeper into the philosophy of non-violence. The Negro all over the South must come to the point that he can say to his white brother: We will match your capacity to inflict suffering with our capacity to endure suffering. We will meet your physical force with soul force. We will not hate you, but we will not obey your evil laws. We will soon wear you down by pure capacity to suffer.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Past, the
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The past is prophetic in that it asserts loudly that wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Peace
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Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Progress
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All progress is precarious, and the solution of one problem brings us face to face with another problem.
-Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength to Love, 1963
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Property
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Property is intended to serve life, and no matter how much we surround it with rights and respect, it has no personal being. It is part of the earth man walks on. It is not man.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Prophecy
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I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over, and I've seen the Promised Land.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Protest
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We who in engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Racism
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It is incontestable and deplorable that Negroes have committed crimes; but they are derivative crimes. They are born of the greater crimes of the white society.
-Martin Luther King, Jr., Address to Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Atlanta, 16 August 1967
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Reality
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I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. That is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Relationships
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I want to be the white man's brother, not his brother-in-law.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Religion
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Yes, I see the Church as the body of Christ. But, oh! How we have blemished and scarred that body through social neglect and through fear of being nonconformists.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Revenge
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That old law about an eye for an eye leaves everybody blind. The time is always right to do the right thing.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Revolution
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The more there are riots, the more repressive actin will take place, and the more we face the danger of a right-wing takeover and eventually a fascist society.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Riots are the voices of the unheard.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
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In this Revolution no plans have been written for retreat.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
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A riot is the language of the unheard.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Right, Rightness
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When you are right you cannot be too radical; when you are wrong, you cannot be too conservative.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Satisfaction
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No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Science
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Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.
-Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength to Love, 1963
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We have genuflected before the god of science only to find that it has given us the atomic bomb, producing fears and anxieties that science can never mitigate.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Service
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Life's most persistent and urgent question is: What are you doing for others? Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how. The moment you know how, you begin to die a little.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Suffering
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My personal trials have also taught me the value of unmerited suffering. As my sufferings mounted I soon realized that there were two ways that I could respond to my situation: either to react with bitterness or seek to transform the suffering into a creative force. I decided to follow the latter course. Recognizing the necessity for suffering I have tried to make of it virtue. If only to save myself from bitterness, I have attempted to see my personal ordeals as an opportunity to transform myself and heal the people involved in the tragic situation, which now obtains. I have lived these last few years with the conviction that unearned suffering is redemptive.
-Martin Luther King, Jr., "Christian Century Magazine", April 27, 1960
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Sympathy
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Pity may represent little more than the impersonal concern which prompts the mailing of a check, but true sympathy is the personal concern which demands the giving of one's soul.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Thought
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Nothing pains some people more than having to think.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Time
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We must use time creatively -- and forever realize that the time is always hope to do great things.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Tragedy
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There is nothing more tragic than to find an individual bogged down in the length of life, devoid of breadth.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Understanding
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Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill-will.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Vietnam
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One of the greatest casualties of the war in Vietnam is the Great Society ... shot down on the battlefield of Vietnam.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Violence
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The limitation of riots, moral questions aside, is that they cannot win and their participants know it. Hence, rioting is not revolutionary but reactionary because it invites defeat. It involves an emotional catharsis, but it must be followed by a sense of futility.
-Martin Luther King, Jr., The Trumpet of Conscience
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Virtue
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The time is always right to do what is right.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
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War
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War is a poor chisel to carve out tomorrow.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Work
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Whatever your life's work is, do it well. A man should do his job so well that the living, the dead, and the unborn could do it no better.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Books by and about Martin Luther King, Jr.
