Hate distorts the personality of the hater. We usually think of what hate does for the individual hated or the individuals hated or the groups hated. But it is even more tragic, it is even more ruinous and injurious to the individual who hates. You just begin hating somebody, and you will begin to do irrational things. You can’t see straight when you hate. You can’t walk straight when you hate. You can’t stand upright. Your vision is distorted.
~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Keep moving. Let nothing slow you up. Move on with dignity and honor and respectability.
~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Man is man because he is free to operate within the framework of his destiny. He is free to deliberate, to make decisions, and to choose between alternatives. He is distinguished from animals by his freedom to do evil or to do good and to walk the high road of beauty or tread the low road of ugly degeneracy.
~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Many of the ugly pages of American history have been obscured and forgotten. A society is always eager to cover misdeeds with a cloak of forgetfulness, but no society can fully repress an ugly past when the ravages persist into the present. America owes a debt of justice which it has only begun to pay.
~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
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The hour is late. The clock of destiny is ticking out. We must act now, before it is too late.
~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
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The success of communism in the world today is due to the failure of democracy to live up to the noble ideals and principles inherent in its system.
~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
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If you have the privilege of a fine education, well, you have it because somebody made it possible. If you have the privilege to gain wealth and a bit of the world’s goods, well, you have it because somebody made it possible. So don’t boast, don’t be arrogant.
~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
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One can become so self-centered, so egocentric that when the hard and difficult moments of life come, he cannot face them because he’s too centered in himself.
~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
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We must meet hate with love. We must meet physical force with soul force.
~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
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There needs to be something in your life of a goddess of Nemesis which pulls you down when you get too high and pulls you up when you feel the sense of inadequacy and that is what religion at its best does. It keeps you to the point that you don’t feel like you are too low and you don’t feel like you are too high but you’ll maintain that type of balance.
~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
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