Quotes about Morality
Cowardice asks the question, 'Is it safe?' Expediency asks the question, 'Is it politic?' Vanity asks the question, 'Is it popular?' But, conscience asks the question, 'Is it right?' And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because one's conscience tells one that it is right
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
On the parable of the Good Samaritan: I imagine that the first question the priest and Levite asked was: 'If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?' But by the very nature of his concern, the good Samaritan reversed the question: 'If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
The more I thought about human nature, the more I saw how our tragic inclination for sin/mistakes causes us to use our minds to rationalize our action.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
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.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
Nonviolence] is directed against forces of evil rather than against persons who happen to be doing the evil. It is evil that the nonviolent resister seeks to defeat, not the persons victimized by evil.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
The Universe is on the side of Justice
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
Violence is not only impractical but immoral.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
I have consistently preached that nonviolence demands that the means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
Lamentably, it is a historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to be more immoral than individuals.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
I have consistently preached that nonviolence demands that the means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek. I have tried to make clear that it is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends. But now I must affirm that it is just as wrong, or perhaps even more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
A man dies when he refuses to stand up for that which is right.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.