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We Know Nothing About Africa, Although Our Roots Are There In Terms Of Our Forbearers. But I Mean As Far As The Average Negro Today, He Knows Nothing About Africa. And I Think He's Got To Face The Fact That He Is An American, His Culture Is Basically American, And One Becomes Adjusted To This When He Realizes What, What He Is.

-Martin Luther King, Jr.

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We Know Nothing About

Martin Luther King, Jr.

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We Know Nothing About Africa, Although Our Roots Are There In Terms Of Our Forbearers. But I Mean As Far As The Average Negro Today, He Knows Nothing About Africa. And I Think He's Got To Face The Fact That He Is An American, His Culture Is Basically American, And One Becomes Adjusted To This When He Realizes What, What He Is.

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Find A Voice In A Whisper.

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We Cannot Be Truly Christian People So Long As We Flaunt The Central Teachings Of Jesus: Brotherly Love And The Golden Rule.

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I Have A Dream That One Day Little Black Boys And Girls Will Be Holding Hands With Little White Boys And Girls.

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I Was Not Afraid Of The Words Of The Violent, But Of The Silence Of The Honest.

We Will Not Be Satisfied Until Justice Rolls Down Like Waters.

I Have A Dream Speech

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Don't Let Anybody Take Your Manhood.

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All Progress Is Precarious, And The Solution Of One Problem Brings Us Face To Face With Another Problem.

One Has Not Only A Legal But A Moral Responsibility To Obey Just Laws. Conversely, One Has A Moral Responsibility To Disobey Unjust Laws. I Would Agree With St. Augustine That ' An Unjust Law Is No Law At All.

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The Oppressed Must Never Allow The Conscience Of The Oppressor To Slumber. Religion Reminds Every Man That He Is His Brother's Keeper.

I Do Think There Must Be Centralized Leadership In The Sense That, Say, In Our Struggle All Of The Leaders Coordinate Their Efforts, Cooperate And, And At Least Evince A Degree Of Unity.

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Nothing To Lose

We Must Learn That To Expect God To Do Everything While We Do Nothing Is Not Faith But Superstition.

We Can No Longer Afford To Worship The God Of Hate Or Bow Before The Altar Of Retaliation. The Oceans Of History Are Made Turbulent By The Ever-rising Tides Of Hate. History Is Cluttered With The Wreckage Of Nations And Individuals That Pursued This Self-defeating Path Of Hate. Love Is The Key To The Solution Of The Problems Of The World.

There Is Nothing More Tragic Than To Find An Individual Bogged Down In The Length Of Life, Devoid Of Breadth.

Everybody Can Be Great...because Anybody Can Serve. You Don't Have To Have A College Degree To Serve.

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Courage Is An Inner Resolution To Go Forward Despite Obstacles; Cowardice Is Submissive Surrender To Circumstances.

Wherever Schools Can Be Integrated Through The Busing Method, And Where It Won't Be Just A, A Terrible Inconvenience, I Think It Ought To Be Done.

Violence Is Anything That Denies Human Integrity, And Leads To Hopelessness And Helplessness.

In This Revolution, No Plans Have Been Written For Retreat. Those Who Will Not Get Into Step Will Find That The Parade Has Passed Them By.

But Life At Its Best Is A Creative Synthesis Of Opposites In Fruitful Harmony.

A Genuine Leader Is Not A Searcher For Consensus But A Molder Of Consensus.

Let's Build Bridges, Not Walls.

Your Self-sacrificin G Devotion To Your Purpose In Life And Your Unwavering Faith Will Carry You Through Times Of Difficulty.

Unwavering Faith

Occasionally In Life There Are Those Moments Of Unutterable Fulfillment Which Cannot Be Completely Explained By Those Symbols Called Words. Their Meanings Can Only Be Articulated By The Inaudible Language Of The Heart.

Cowardice Is Submissive Surrender To Circumstances.

Each One Of Us Has The Power To Make Others Feel Better Or Worse. Making Others Feel Better Is Much More Fun Than Making Others Feel Worse. Making Others Feel Better Generally Makes Us Feel Better

For You Will Never Be What You Ought To Be Until They [your Fellow Humans] Are What They Ought To Be.

Freedom Is Never Voluntarily Given By The Oppressor; It Must Be Demanded By The Oppressed.

I Have A Dream... I Have A Dream Today... And If America Is To Be A Great Nation This Must Become True.

Every Man Must Decide Whether He Will Walk In The Light Of Creative Altruism Or In The Darkness Of Destructive Selfishness.

The Choice Is Not Between Violence And Nonviolence But Between Nonviolence And Nonexistence.

If You Can't Fly Then Run, If You Can't Run Then Walk, If You Can't Walk Then Crawl, But Whatever You Do You Have To Keep Moving Forward.

That Old Law About 'an Eye For An Eye' Leaves Everybody Blind. The Time Is Always Right To Do The Right Thing.

The Labor Movement Was The Principal Force That Transformed Misery And Despair Into Hope And Progress.

Violence Multiplies Violence.

The Major Problem Of Life Is Learning How To Handle The Costly Interruptions. The Door That Slams Shut, The Plan That Got Sidetracked, The Marriage That Failed. Or That Lovely Poem That Didn't Get Written Because Someone Knocked On The Door.

And So Even Though We Face The Difficulties Of Today And Tomorrow, I Still Have A Dream. It Is A Dream Deeply Rooted In The American Dream.

We Are Called To Speak For The Weak, For The Voiceless, For The Victims Of Our Nation And For Those It Calls Enemy, For No Document From Human Hands Can Make These Humans Any Less Our Brothers And Sisters.

The Christian Faith Makes It Possible For Us Nobly To Accept That Which Cannot Be Changed, And To Meet Disappointments And Sorrow With An Inner Poise, And To Absorb The Most Intense Pain Without Abandoning Our Sense Of Hope.

We Are Challenged To Develop A World Perspective. No Individual Can Live Alone, No Nation Can Live Alone, And Anyone Who Feels That He Can Live Alone Is Sleeping Through A Revolution. The World In Which We Live Is Geographically One.

The Beauty Of Genuine Brotherhood And Peace Is More Precious Than Diamonds Or Silver Or Gold.

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.

When We Allow Freedom Ring, When We Let It Ring From Every Village And Every Hamlet, From Every State And Every City...

I Have A Dream Speech

I Guess One Of The Great Agonies Of Life Is That We Are Constantly Trying To Finish That Which Is Unfinishable

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We Must All Learn To Live Together As Brothers. Or We Will All Perish Together As Foolsfor Some Strange Reason I Can Never Be What I Ought To Be Until You Are What You Ought To Be. And You Can Never Be What You Ought To Be Until I Am What I Ought To Be.

We Must Discover The Power Of Love, The Power, The Redemptive Power Of Love. And When We Discover That We Will Be Able To Make Of This Old World A New World. We Will Be Able To Make Men Better. Love Is The Only Way.

A Man Who Hasn't Found Anything He'd Die For Doesn't Deserve To Live.

Rioting Is Not Revolutionary.

We Talk Eloquently About Our Commitment To The Principles Of Christianity, And Yet Our Lives Are Saturated With The Practices Of Paganism. We Proclaim Our Devotion To Democracy, But We Sadly Practice The Very Opposite Of The Democratic Creed.... This Strange Dichotomy, This Agonizing Gulf Between The Ought And The Is, Represents The Tragic Theme Of Man's Earthly Pilgrimage.

In The Event Of A Violent Revolution, We Would Be Sorely Outnumbered. And When It Was All Over, The Negro Would Face The Same Unchanged Conditions, The Same Squalor And Deprivation-the Only Difference Being That His Bitterness Would Be Even More Intense, His Disenchantment Even More Abject. Thus, In Purely Practical As Well As Moral Terms, The American Negro Has No Rational Alternative To Nonviolence.

The Intellectual And Moral Satisfaction That I Failed To Gain From The Utilitarianism Of Bentham And Mill, The Revolutionary Methods Of Marx And Lenin, The Social Contract Theory Of Hobbes, The "back To Nature" Optimism Of Rousseau, And The Superman Philosophy Of Nietzsche, I Found In The Nonviolent Resistance Philosophy Of Gandhi. I Came To Feel That This Was The Only Morally And Practically Sound Method Open To Oppressed People In Their Struggle For Freedom.

My Friends, I Must Say To You That We Have Not Made A Single Gain In Civil Rights Without Determined Legal And Nonviolent Pressure.

We've Been In The Mountain Of War. We've Been In The Mountain Of Violence. We've Been In The Mountain Of Hatred Long Enough. It Is Necessary To Move On Now, But Only By Moving Out Of This Mountain Can We Move To The Promised Land Of Justice And Brotherhood And The Kingdom Of God. It All Boils Down To The Fact That We Must Never Allow Ourselves To Become Satisfied With Unattained Goals. We Must Always Maintain A Kind Of Divine Discontent.

The Greatest Pain Is The Pain Of A New Idea.

Our Nation Was Born In Genocide When It Embraced The Doctrine That The Original American, The Indian, Was An Inferior Race. ... We Are Perhaps The Only Nation Which Tried As A Matter Of National Policy To Wipe Out Its Indigenous Population. Moreover, We Elevated That Tragic Experience Into A Noble Crusade. Indeed, Even Today We Have Not Permitted Ourselves To Reject Or To Feel Remorse For This Shameful Episode.

We Still Have A Choice Today: Nonviolent Coexistence Or Violent Co-annihilation. This May Well Be Mankind's Last Chance To Choose Between Chaos And Community.

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.

The Nonviolent Approach Does Not Immediately Change The Heart Of The Oppressor. It First Does Something To The Hearts And Souls Of Those Committed To It. It Gives Them New Self-respect; It Calls Up Resources Of Strength And Courage They Did Not Know They Had.

Without Denying The Value Of Scientific Endeavor, There Is A Striking Absurdity In Committing Billions To Reach The Moon Where No People Live, While Only A Fraction Of That Amount Is Appropriated To Service The Densely Populated Slums.

[i]t Must Be Emphasized That Nonviolent Resistance Is Not A Method For Cowards; It Does Resist. If One Uses This Method Because He Is Afraid Or Merely Because He Lacks The Instruments Of Violence, He Is Not Truly Nonviolent. This Is Why Gandhi Often Said That If Cowardice Is The Only Alternative To Violence, It Is Better To Fight.

Education Without Social Action Is A One-sided Value Because It Has No True Power Potential. Social Action Without Education Is A Weak Expression Of Pure Energy. Deeds Uninformed By Educated Thought Can Take False Directions. When We Go Into Action And Confront Our Adversaries, We Must Be As Armed With Knowledge As They. Our Policies Should Have The Strength Of Deep Analysis Beneath Them To Be Able To Challenge The Clever Sophistries Of Our Opponents.

A Man Can't Ride Your Back Unless It's Bent.

African American

The Ultimate Tragedy Is Not The Oppression And Cruelty By The Bad People But The Silence Over That By The Good People.

In The End, We Will Remember Not The Words Of Our Enemies But The Silence Of Our Friends.

We Have Waited For More Than Three Hundred And Forty Years For Our Constitutional And God-given Rights.

Whenever You Are Engaged In Work That Serves Humanity And Is For The Building Of Humanity, It Has Dignity And It Has Worth.

We Are Called Upon To Help The Discouraged Beggars In Life's Marketplace. But One Day We Must Come To See That An Edifice Which Produces Beggars Needs Restructuring.

But By All Means, Keep Moving.

God Has Given Each Normal Person A Capacity To Achieve Some End. True, Some Are Endowed With More Talent Than Others, But God Has Left None Of Us Talentless.

In The Struggle For Human Rights And Justice, Negros Will Make A Mistake If They Become Bitter And Indulge In Hate Campaigns.

And I Say To You, I Have Decided To Stick With Love, For I Know That Love Is Ultimately The Only Answer To Mankind's Problems. And I'm Going To Talk About It Everywhere I Go. For I Have Seen Too Much Hate... Every Time I See It, I Know That It Does Something To Their Faces And Their Personalities, And I Say To Myself That Hate Is Too Great A Burden To Bear. I Have Decided To Love.

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.

I May Not Be The Man I Want To Be; I May Not Be The Man I Ought To Be; I May Not Be The Man I Could Be; I May Not Be The Man I Truly Can Be; But Praise God, I'm Not The Man I Once Was

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