21 Inspiring Martin Luther King, Jr. Quotes That Will Motivate You To Greatness

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Free at last, free at last. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was not only a humanitarian, a pastor, a loving father and husband, but a leader, a revolutionary, and most of all, an inspiration to us all.
A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.
Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into friend.
An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.
If I cannot do great things, I can do small things in a great way.
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.
There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right.
In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.
Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.
Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can’t ride you unless your back is bent.
A man who won’t die for something is not fit to live.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.
Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.
We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.
Only in the darkness can you see the stars.
No one really knows why they are alive until they know what they’d die for.
Forgiveness is not an occasional act, it is a constant attitude.
People fail to get along because they fear each other; they fear each other because they don’t know each other; they don’t know each other because they have not communicated with each other.
The choice is not between violence and nonviolence but between nonviolence and nonexistence.
Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, “What are you doing for others?”
One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.
image – Minnesota Historical Society