Remembering Dr Martin Luther King Jr with 10 inspirational quotes

A Baptist minister, fervent activist, humanitarian, and leader in the African-American Civil Rights Movement, Dr. King is best known for his role in the advancement of civil rights using nonviolent civil disobedience.

Dr. King’s legacy has inspired civil rights activists across the world and his vision for a non-racial and equal society is shared by many.

We celebrate his legacy and look at some of the words he left us with in his quest to see a peaceful, equal and non-racial society.

1. “An Individual has not started living fully until they can rise above the narrow confines of individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of humanity. Every person must decide at some point, whether they will walk in light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness”.  Quoted in The Words of Martin Luther King, Jr.: Second Edition

2. “I have decided to stick to love…Hate is too great a burden to bear”. Quoted in A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches.

3. “There is another side called justice. And justice is really love in calculation. Justice is love correcting that which revolts against love”. Montgomery Bus Boycott speech, at Holt Street Baptist Church, December 1955.

Breaking news of Dr King’s assassination Photo: blog.genealogybank

4. “An individual has not begun to live until he can rise above the narrow horizons of his particular individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity. And this is one of the big problems of life, that so many people never quite get to the point of rising above self. And so they end up the tragic victims of self-centeredness. They end up the victims of distorted and disrupted personality”. Conquering Self-centeredness, Sermon, Montgomery, Alabama.

5. “The thing that we need in the world today is a group of men and women who will stand up for right and to be opposed to wrong, wherever it is”. Rediscovering Lost Values, 1954.

6. “Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in healthcare is the most shocking and inhumane”. Quoted in a speech to the Second National Convention of the Medical Committee for Human Rights, Chicago, March, 1966.

7. “If you can’t fly, run; if you can’t run, walk; if you can’t walk, crawl; but by all means keep moving”. Founders Day Address, April 1960.

8. “I am not interested in power for power’s sake, but I’m interested in power that is moral, that is right and that is good”.

9. “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 speech, March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, August 28, 1963.

10. “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”. –Strength to Love, 1963.

Source: Wikiquotes