In this time of chaos, fear, and doubt, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s words bring calm, clarity, and unity.

January 15 should have been King’s 92nd birthday and Americans celebrated his legacy and what his words of wisdom mean now during the 35th annual MLK Day of Celebration on Monday, January 18. The pastor and humanitarian’s life was cut short when he was just 39 years old: he was shot and killed on April 4, 1968.

You can find some of MLK’s most important and poignant quotes, collected by Bored Panda, below. Upvote the ones that resonated the most with you and the ones that you think are especially important in these confusing times. Become a part of the discussion and share your thoughts about King’s ideas and his legacy in the comments.

#1

“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”

#2

“If you can’t fly, run. If you can’t run, walk. If you can’t walk, crawl, but by all means, keep moving.”

#3

“An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.”

A very recent documentary, MLK/FBI, released by director Sam Pollard and based on newly declassified files shows how the US government surveilled and harassed King: from wiretaps to suggestions that he should kill himself.

Meanwhile, King’s oldest son, Martin Luther King III, told CNN that his father would be disappointed with the US if he were still alive. “My father always believed in the people of our nation. Certainly, he would be greatly disappointed in how we have chosen to conduct ourselves at this particular moment,” he said. “He understood we are a United States of America, not a divided state of America, and he would be telling us we must turn to each other, not turn on each other.”

Bored Panda spoke about the fight to end racism in the United States with positivity blogger and writer Shola Richards. According to Richards, the deaths of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, Breonna Taylor on March 13, and others “irrevocably jolted awake” many people to the reality of what life in the US is like for black people. However, he pointed out that real change is going to be a long journey that will not happen overnight or even in a single year.

#4

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

#5

“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”

#6

“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.”

“My hope is that as many people as possible will continue to educate themselves on systemic racism by reading informative books, like ‘How to be an Anti-Racist’ by Ibram Kendi or ‘White Fragility’ by Robin DiAngelo. I hope that as many people as possible will continue to stand up to racism and show up as strong allies, despite some of their friends and family rolling their eyes at them for doing so,” Richards explained his hopes that the movement against systemic racism doesn’t fizzle out but continues through people educating themselves.

In Richards’ opinion, “people of all races” protesting together in large numbers is the most effective way to “demand meaningful change” in the country.

“I hope that people will continue to have important discussions about race, even though those discussions can be uncomfortable and difficult. Most of all, I hope that people won’t get tired, become discouraged, and quit on this long journey to reshape America. This is how we must fight racism, and as with anything meaningful, it’s going to require a lot of work.” Remember, change doesn’t happen overnight. But it’s worth the effort for a world with more humanity.

#7

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

#8

“The more there are riots, the more repressive action will take place, and the more we face the danger of a right-wing takeover and eventually a fascist society.”

#9

“The function of education, therefore, is to teach one to live intensively and to think critically. … Intelligence plus character — that is the goal of true education.”

#10

“Nonviolence is absolute commitment to the way of love. Love is not emotional bash; it is not empty sentimentalism. It is the active outpouring of one’s whole being into the being of another.”

#11

“We must accept finite disappointment but never lose infinite hope.”

#12

“History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.”

#13

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

#14

“We have deluded ourselves into believing the myth that capitalism grew and prospered out of the Protestant ethic of hard work and sacrifices. The fact is that capitalism was built on the exploitation and suffering of black slaves and continues to thrive on the exploitation of the poor — both black and white, both here and abroad.”

#15

“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.”

#16

“Never succumb to the temptation of becoming bitter.”

#17

“Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.”

#18

“The time is always right to do what is right.”

#19

“I have decided to stick with love. … Hate is too great a burden to bear.”

#20

“The problems of racial injustice and economic injustice cannot be solved without a radical redistribution of political and economic power.”

#21

“The ultimate tragedy … was not the brutality of the bad people, but the silence of the good people.”

#22

“He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.”

#23

“There comes a time when we must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because it is right.”

#24

“Forgiveness is not an occasional act; it is a permanent attitude.”

#25

“Let no man pull you so low as to hate him.”

#26

“Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle.”

#27

“I came to the conclusion that there is an existential moment in your life when you must decide to speak for yourself; nobody else can speak for you.”

#28

“We cannot walk alone.”

#29

“Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.”

#30

“When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”

#31

“It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence. It is either nonviolence or nonexistence.”

#32

“Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?'”

#33

“We may have all come on different ships, but we’re in the same boat now.”

#34

“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.”

#35

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

#36

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

#37

“Never, never be afraid to do what’s right, especially if the well-being of a person or animal is at stake. Society’s punishments are small compared to the wounds we inflict on our soul when we look the other way.”

#38

“That old law about ‘an eye for an eye’ leaves everybody blind. The time is always right to do the right thing.”

#39

“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.”

#40

“People fail to get along because they fear each other; they fear each other because they don’t know each other; they don’t know each other because they have not communicated with each other.”

#41

“I think that we’ve got to see that a riot is the language of the unheard. And, what is it that America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the economic plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last few years.”

#42

“He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love.”

#43

“A lie cannot live.”

#44

“Why is equality so assiduously avoided? Why does white America delude itself, and how does it rationalize the evil it retains?”

#45

“The Negro has no room to make any substantial compromises because his store of advantages is too small. He must press unrelentingly for quality, integrated education or his whole drive for freedom will be undermined by the absence of a most vital and indispensable element — learning.”

#46

“No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

#47

“Instead of making history, we are made by history.”

#48

“Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think.”

#49

“No one really knows why they are alive until they know what they’d die for.”

#50

“I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality. … I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality.”

#51

“The past is prophetic in that it asserts loudly that wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.”

#52

“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

#53

“Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness. ”

#54

“Science investigates; religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge, which is power; religion gives man wisdom, which is control. Science deals mainly with facts; religion deals mainly with values. The two are not rivals.”

#55

“We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right.”

#56

“All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.”

#57

“There comes a time when people get tired of being pushed out of the glittering sunlight of life’s July and left standing amid the piercing chill of an alpine November.”

#58

“There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love.”

#59

“Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.”

#60

“We must build dikes of courage to hold back the flood of fear.”

#61

“Those who are not looking for happiness are the most likely to find it, because those who are searching forget that the surest way to be happy is to seek happiness for others.”

#62

“You will change your mind; You will change your looks; You will change your smile, laugh, and ways but no matter what you change, you will always be you.”

#63

“Whatever your life’s work is, do it well. A man should do his job so well that the living, the dead, and the unborn could do it no better. ”

#64

“The art of acceptance is the art of making someone who has just done you a small favor wish that he might have done you a greater one.”

#65

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

#66

“Almost always, the creative dedicated minority has made the world better.”

#67

“Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable… Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.”

#68

“If the cruelties of slavery could not stop us, the opposition we now face will surely fail. Because the goal of America is freedom, abused and scorned tho’ we may be, our destiny is tied up with America’s destiny.”

#69

“First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. 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.”

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