WIST

We must come to see that peace is not merely a distant goal we seek, but it is a means by which we arrive at that goal. We must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
“A Christmas Sermon on Peace,” radio broadcast, CBC (Canada) (24 Dec 1967)

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit together at the table of brotherhood; 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.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
“I Have a Dream” speech, Washington, DC (1963)

From every mountainside, let freedom ring. 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 the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
“I Have a Dream,” speech, Washington, DC (28 Aug 1963)

Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. 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. 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! So I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
“I’ve Been To The Mountaintop,” speech, Memphis (3 Apr 1968)
King's final public speech. He was assassinated the following day.

Reason, devoid of the purifying power of faith, can never free itself from distortions and rationalizations.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
“Pilgrimage to Nonviolence” , Christian Century (13 Apr 1960)
Full text.

As long as there is poverty in the world I can never be rich, even if I possess a billion dollars. As long as millions of people are inflicted with debilitating diseases and cannot expect to live more than thirty-five years, I can never be totally healthy even if I receive a perfect bill of health from Mayo Clinic. Strangely enough, I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
“Remaining Awake through a Great Revolution,” Commencement Speech, Morehouse College, Atlanta (2 Jun 1959)
Full text.

Any church that violates the “whosoever will, let him come” doctrine is a dead, cold church, and nothing but a little social club with a thin veneer of religiosity.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
“The Drum Major Instinct,” sermon, Ebenezer Baptist Church, Atlanta (4 Feb 1968)

I still believe that standing up for the truth of God is the greatest thing in the word. This is the end of life. The end of life is not to be happy. The end of life is not to achieve pleasure and avoid pain. The end of life is to do the will of God, come what may.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
“The Most Durable Power,” sermon, Montgomery, Alabama (6 Nov 1956)

Communism reduces men to a cog in the wheel of the state. The communist may object, saying that in Marxian theory the state is an “interim reality” that will “wither away” when the classless society emerges. True — in theory; but it is also true that, while the state lasts, it is an end in itself. Man is a means to that end. He has no inalienable rights. His only rights are derived from, and conferred by, the state. Under such a system the fountain of freedom runs dry.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
“Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?” ch. 3 (1967)
    (Source)

We are called to play the good Samaritan on life’s roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be beaten and robbed as they make their journey through life. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it understands that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
“Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?” ch. 3 (1967)
    (Source)

We must honestly admit that capitalism has often left a gulf between superfluous wealth and abject poverty, has created conditions permitting necessities to be taken from the many to give luxuries to the few, and has encouraged smallhearted men to become cold and conscienceless so that, like Dives before Lazarus, they are unmoved by suffering, poverty-stricken humanity. The profit motive, when it is the sole basis of an economic system, encourages cutthroat competiotion and selfish ambition that inspire men to be more I-centered than thou-centered.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
“Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?” ch. 3 (1967)
    (Source)

A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
“Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?” ch. 3 (1967)
Full text.

It is not enough to say ‘We must not wage war.’ It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
“Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?” ch. 6 (1967)
    (Source)

The poorest people in our country today, on the whole, are working every day. But they are earning wages so low that they cannot begin to function in the mainstream of the economic life of our nation. … We have thousands and thousands of people working on full-time jobs, with part-time incomes.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
“Why We Must Go to Washington” (15 Jan 1968)

As you press on for justice, be sure to move with dignity and discipline, using only the weapon of love. Let no man pull you so low as to hate him. Always avoid violence. If you succumb to the temptation of using violence in your struggle, unborn generations will be the recipients of a long and desolate night of bitterness, and your chief legacy to the future will be an endless reign of meaningless chaos.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
(1956)

One who condones evils is just as guilty as the one who perpetrates it.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
(Attributed)

The good neighbor looks beyond the external accidents and discerns those inner qualities that make all men human and therefore, brothers.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
(Attributed)

The soft-minded man always fears change. He feels security in the status quo, and he has an almost morbid fear of the new. For him, the greatest pain is the pain of a new idea.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
(Attributed)

Philanthropy is commendable, but it must not cause the philanthropist to overlook the circumstances of economic injustice which make philanthropy necessary.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
(Attributed)

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
(Attributed)

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.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
(Attributed)

We must learn to live together as brothers, or perish together as fools.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
(Attributed)

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

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
(Attributed)

True peace is not merely the absence of tension; It is the presence of justice.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
(Attributed)

Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
(Attributed)

Freedom is not free.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
(Attributed)

In the end, it’s not the words of our enemies we will remember, but the silence of our friends.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
(Attributed)

Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
(Attributed)

There is nothing more tragic than to find an individual bogged down in the length of life, devoid of breadth.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
(Attributed)

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.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
(Attributed)

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

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
(Attributed)

Faith is taking the first step, even when you don’t see the whole staircase.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
(Attributed)
Variant: "Take the first step in faith. You don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step."

We all too often have socialism for the rich and rugged free market capitalism for the poor.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
(Attributed)
This phrase is frequently attributed to King, often pointing to some 1964 speech, though the exact phrasing can't be found in his works. He did use variations of the phrase on a number of occasions (e.g., "The Other America", speech at Grosse Pointe High School (14 Mar 1968), but it's also a construction that's been used by others before and after King.

When you are right you cannot be too radical; when you are wrong, you cannot be too conservative.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
(Attributed)

The gospel at its best deals with the whole man, not only his soul but his body, not only his spiritual well-being, but his material well being. Any religion that professes to be concerned about the souls of men and is not concerned about the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strangle them and the social conditions that cripple them is a spiritually moribund religion awaiting burial.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
Pilgrimage to Non-Violence (1960)

The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
Strength to Love (1963)

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction … The chain reaction of evil — hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars — must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
Strength To Love (1963)

The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state. It must be the guide and the critic of the state, and never its tool. If the church does not recapture its prophetic zeal, it will become an irrelevant social club without moral or spiritual authority.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
Strength to Love (1963)

Science deals mainly with facts; religion deals mainly with values. The two are not rivals. They are complementary.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
Strength to Love, 1.1 (1963)

The saving of our world from pending doom will come, not through the complacent adjustment of the conforming majority, but through the creative maladjustment of a nonconforming minority.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
Strength to Love, 2.3 (1963)

Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
Strength to Love, 4.3 (1963)

In a sense, every day is judgment day, and we, through our deeds and words, our silence and speech, are constantly writing in the Book of Life.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
Strength to Love, 9.2 (1963)

Man is neither villain nor hero; he is rather both villain and hero.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
Strength to Love, ch. 11 (conclusion) (1963)

Success, recognition, and conformity are the bywords of the modern world where everyone seems to crave the anesthetizing security of being identified with the majority.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
Strength to Love, ch. 2 (introduction) (1963)

Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
Strength to Love, ch. 4 (1963)

We must accept finite disappointment, but we must never lose infinite hope. Only in this way shall we live without the fatigue of bitterness and the drain of resentment.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
Strength to Love, ch. 9 “Shattered Dreams” (1963)

[A majority of people] are not theoretical atheists; they are practical atheists. They do not deny the existence of God with their lips, but they are continually denying his existence with their lives.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
Strength to Love, ch. 9 (1963)

Will we march only to the music of time, or will we, risking criticism and abuse, march to the soul-saving music of eternity?

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
Strength to Love, II (1963)

Men often hate each other because they fear each other; they fear each other because they don’t know each other; they don’t know each other because they can not communicate; they can not communicate because they are separated.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story (1958)

Men often hate each other because they fear each other; they fear each other because they don’t know each other; they don’t know each other because they can not communicate; they can not communicate because they are separated.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story 1958

Every crisis has both its dangers and its opportunities. Each can spell either salvation or doom.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
Stride Toward Freedom, ch. 11 (1958)

To accept passively an unjust system is to cooperate with that system; thereby the oppressed become as evil as the oppressor. Noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
Stride Toward Freedom, ch. 11 (1958)

True peace is not merely the absence of tension, it is the presence of justice.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
Stride Toward Freedom, ch. 2 (1958)

Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor in America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
The Trumpet of Conscience (1967)

Alienation is a form of living death. It is the acid of despair that dissolves society.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
The Trumpet of Conscience (1967)

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

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
The Trumpet of Conscience (1968)

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.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
Wall Street Journal (13 Nov 1962)

The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. So it goes. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (1967)

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

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (1967)

Truth is found neither in traditional capitalism nor in classical communism. Each represents a partial truth. Capitalism fails to see the truth in collectivism. Communism fails to see the truth in individualism. Capitalism fails to realize that life is social. Communism fails to realize that life is personal.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? ch. 3 (1967)
    (Source)

The curse of poverty has no justification in our age. It is socially as cruel and blind as the practice of cannibalism at the dawn of civilization, when men ate each other because they had not yet learned to take food from the soil or to consume the abundant animal life around them. The time has come for us to civilize ourselves by the total, direct and immediate abolition of poverty.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?, “Where We Are Going” (1967)

What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive and that love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, 2.2 (1967)

To ignore evil is to become an accomplice to it.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
Where Do We Go from Here>, 3.2 (1967)

One who breaks an unjust law that 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.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
Letter from Birmingham Jail (16 Apr 1963)

We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct action campaign that was “well timed” in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word “Wait!” It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This “Wait” has almost always meant “Never.” We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that “justice too long delayed is justice denied.”

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
Letter from Birmingham Jail (16 Apr 1963)
See Gladstone.

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
Letter from Birmingham Jail (16 Apr. 1963)

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.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
Letter from the Birmingham Jail

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.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
Letter from the Birmingham Jail (16 Apr 1963)

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.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
Letter from the Birmingham Jail (16 Apr 1963)

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 Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
Letter from the Birmingham Jail (16 Apr 1963)
Full text.

Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
Letter from the Birmingham Jail (16 Apr 1963)
Full text

I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
Letter from the Birmingham Jail (16 Apr 1963)

Full text.

I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of thermonuclear destruction. I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Stockholm, Sweden (11 Dec 1964)

Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time: the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence. Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Stockholm, Sweden (11 Dec 1964)

Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon. Indeed, it is a weapon unique in history, which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Stockholm, Sweden (1964)

Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter. I won’t have any money to leave behind. I won’t have the fine and luxurious things of life to leave behind. But I just want to leave a committed life behind.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
Sermon, Ebenezer Baptist Church (4 Feb 1968)
Full text. Adaptation by King of the 1952 homily ‘‘Drum-Major Instincts’’ by J. Wallace Hamilton. Paraphrased on the MLK memorial in Washington, DC, as, "I was a drum major for justice, peace and righteousness."

Ultimately, a great nation is a compassionate nation.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
Sermon, Passion Sunday, National Cathedral, Washington (31 Mar 1968)

There is nothing new about poverty. What is new is that we now have the techniques and the resources to get rid of poverty. The real question is whether we have the will.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
Sermon, Passion Sunday, National Cathedral, Washington (31 Mar 1968)

Vanity asks the question — is it popular? Conscience asks the question — is it right?

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
Sermon, Passion Sunday, National Cathedral, Washington, DC (31 Mar 1968)

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.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
Speech at Civil Rights March on Washington (28 Aug 1963)

If a man hasn’t discovered something that he would die for, he isn’t fit to live.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
Speech in Detroit (23-Jun-1963)

With Selma and the voting rights bill one era of our struggle came to a close and a new era came into being. Now our struggle is for genuine equality, which means economic equality. For we know that it isn’t enough to integrate lunch counters. What does it profit a man to be able to eat at an integrated lunch counter if he doesn’t earn enough money to buy a hamburger and a coup of coffee?

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
Speech to Striking Sanitation Workers, Memphis, Tennessee (18 Mar 1968)

King appears to have used the phrase on a number of occasions (I found references to a Birmingham sit-in and to 1965), but the above is the one case, a few weeks before his death, that I was able to pin down.

Other (earlier) versions one finds quoted and paraphrased:

• "It does no good to be able to eat at a lunch counter if you can't afford to buy a hamburger."
• "It doesn't do much good when you can sit at a lunch couner but you can't afford to buy a hamburger."
• "What good does it do to be able to eat at a lunch counter if you can't buy a hamburger?"

 

Ultimately, a genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus, but a molder of consensus.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
Speech, Labor Leadership Assembly for Peace (Nov 1967)
Often quoted as "moulder of consensus."

You know my friends, there comes a time when people get tired of being trampled by the iron feet of oppression … If we are wrong, the Supreme Court of this nation is wrong. If we are wrong, the Constitution of the United States is wrong. And if we are wrong, God Almighty is wrong. If we are wrong, Jesus of Nazareth was merely a utopian dreamer that never came down to Earth. If we are wrong, justice is a lie, love has no meaning. And we are determined here in Montgomery to work and fight until justice runs down like water, and righteousness like a mighty stream.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
Speech, Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) Mass Meeting, Hold Street Baptist Church, Montgomery (1955)

On some positions cowardice asks the question, “Is it safe?” Expediency asks the question, “Is it is politic?” Vanity asks the question, “Is it is popular?” But conscience asks the question, “Is it right?” There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular but he must do it because conscience tells him it is right.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
Speech, Santa Rita, Calif., (14 Jan 1968)

Intelligence plus character — that is the goal of true education.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
Speech, Washington (26 Mar 1964)