(Getty)
Martin Luther King Jr., was one of the most inspirational people to ever walk the earth. In addition to his own great words, the peace icon inspired beautiful words from others.
Here are some of the most poignant:
(Getty)
We can move in that direction as a country, in greater polarization – black people amongst blacks, and white amongst whites, filled with hatred toward one another. Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand and to comprehend, and replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand, compassion and love…. What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black.
– Robert F. Kennedy, commenting on Martin Luther King’s assassination in April 1968.
(Getty)
For years, I declined to fill in the form for my Senate press credential that asked me to state my ‘race,’ unless I was permitted to put ‘human.’ The form had to be completed under penalty of perjury, so I could not in conscience put ‘white,’ which is not even a color let alone a ‘race,’ and I sternly declined to put ‘Caucasian,’ which is an exploded term from a discredited ethnology. Surely the essential and unarguable core of King’s campaign was the insistence that pigmentation was a false measure: a false measure of mankind (yes, mankind) and an inheritance from a time of great ignorance and stupidity and cruelty, when one drop of blood could make you ‘black.
–Christopher Hitchens, writer and professional curmudgeon.
(Getty)
We can’t answer King’s assassination with violence. That would be the worst tribute we could pay him.
–Sammy Davis Jr.
Professor Henry Louis Taylor. (Facebook)
Everyone knows, even the smallest kid knows about Martin Luther King Jr., can say his most famous moment was that ‘I have a dream speech. No one can go further than one sentence. All we know is that this had a dream. We do not know what the dream was’.
–Professor Henry Louis Taylor Jr.
(Getty)
We rightly and best remember Dr. King’s soaring oratory that day, how he gave mighty voice to the quiet hopes of millions; how he offered a salvation path for oppressed and oppressors alike. His words belong to the ages, possessing a power and prophecy unmatched in our time.
– President Barack Obama
(Getty)
Let the strivings of us all, prove Martin Luther King Jr. to have been correct, when he said that humanity can no longer be tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war. Let the efforts of us all, prove that he was not a mere dreamer when he spoke of the beauty of genuine brotherhood and peace being more precious than diamonds or silver or gold. Let a new age dawn!
– Nelson Mandela
Poet Sri Chinmoy. (Wikipedia)
He was very pure in mind and heart. He was a lover: a lover not only of his race but a lover of all mankind. His heart was so broad, so great, so magnanimous, and this gave him a most sincere feeling of absolute oneness with everyone. This is what made him so divinely great.
– Sri Chinmoy, poet.
(Getty)
Dr. King wants the same thing I want. Freedom.
– Malcolm X.