Quotes about Equality
If physical death is the price that I must pay to free my white brothers and sisters from a permanent death of the spirit, then nothing can be more redemptive.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
It was argued that the Negro was inferior by nature because of Noah's curse upon the children of Ham.... The greatest blasphemy of the whole ugly process was that the white man ended up making God his partner in the exploitation of the Negro.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
As a teenager I had never been able to accept the fact of having to go to the back of a bus or sit in the segregated section of a train. The first time I had been seated behind a curtain in a dining car, I felt as if the curtain had been dropped on my selfhood.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
A fifth point concerning nonviolent resistance is that it avoids not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. The nonviolent resister not only refuses to shoot his opponent but he also refuses to hate him.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
The question is not whether we will be extremists but what kind of extremist will we be.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
The problem with hatred and violence is that they intensity the fears of the white majority, and leave them less ashamed of their prejudices toward Negroes.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
The majority of the Negroes who took part in the year-long boycott of Montgomery's buses were poor and untutored; but they understood the essence of the Montgomery movement; one elderly woman summed it up for the rest. When asked after several weeks of walking whether she was tired, she answered: "My feet is tired, but my soul is at rest."
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
In the final analysis the weakness of Black Power is its failure to see that the black man needs the white man and the white man needs the black man.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
Discrimination is a hellhound that gnaws at Negroes in every waking moment of their lives to remind them that the lie of their inferiority is accepted as truth in the society dominating them.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
God is not merely interested in the freedom of brown men, yellow men, red men and black men. He is interested in the freedom of the whole human race.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.