The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.

by Martin Luther King Jr.

If that power refused to acknowledge its debt to the poor, it would have failed to live up to its promise to insure “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” to its citizens.

We have, through massive nonviolent action, an opportunity to avoid a national disaster and create a new spirit of class and racial harmony.

We can write another luminous moral chapter in American history. All of us are on trial in this troubled hour, but time still permits us to meet the future with a clear conscience.

We have the power to change America and give a kind of new vitality to the re...

And we can get those young men and women who’ve lost faith in the church to see that Jesus was a serious man precisely because he dealt with the tang of the human amid the glow of the Div...

He was concerned about bread; he opened and started Operation Breadba...

The greatest revolutionary that history has ever known. And when people tell us when we stand up that we got our inspiration from this or that, go back and ...

I didn’t get my inspiration from Karl Marx; I got it from a man named Jesus, a Galilean saint who said he was anointed to heal the broken-hearted. He was anointed to deal with the problems of the poor. And that is where we get our inspiration.

And I’m simply saying this morning, that you should resolve that you will never become so secure in your thinking or your living that you forget the least of these….

In some sense, all of us are the least of these, but there are some who are least than the least of these.

I couldn’t pray my prayer without saying, “God, help us, as we sit at this table to realize that there are those who are less fortunate than we are. And grant that we will never forget them, no matter where we are.”

and I don’t want you feeling that you are better than they are. For you will never be what you ought to be until they are what they ought to be.”

One day our society will come to respect the sanitation worker if it is to survive, for the person who picks up our garbage is in the final analysis as significant as the physician, for if he doesn’t do his job, diseases are rampant. All labor has dignity.

Dives didn’t go to hell because he was rich. His wealth was his opportunity to bridge the gulf that separated him from his brother Lazarus. Dives went to hell because he allowed Lazarus to become invisible.

If America does not use her vast resources of wealth to end poverty and make it possible for all of God’s children to have the basic necessities of life, she too will go to hell.

the thing that makes me happy is that I can hear a voice crying through the vista of time, saying: “It may not come today or it may not come tomorrow, but it is well that it is within thine heart. It’s well that you are trying.”

You may not see it. The dream may not be fulfilled, but it’s just good that you have a desire to bring it into reality. It’s well that it’s in thine heart.

In the final analysis, God does not judge us by the separate incidents or the separate mistakes that we make, but by the total bent of our lives.

In the final analysis, God knows that his children are weak and they are frail. In the final analysis, what God requires is that your heart is right.

And the question I want to raise with you: is your heart right? If your heart isn’t right, fix it up...

Get somebody to be able to say about you: “He may not have reached the highest height, he may not have realized all of his dreams, but he tried.” Isn’t that a wo...

“He tried to be a good man. He tried to be a just man. He tried to be an honest man. His hea...

And I can hear a voice saying, crying out through the eternities, “I accept you. You are a recipient of my grace because it was in your heart. And it i...

Strangely enough, I would turn to the Almighty and say, “If you allow me to live just a few years in the second half of the twentieth century, I will be happy.”

But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough can you see the stars. And I see God working in this period of the twentieth century.

We aren’t engaged in any negative protest and in any negative arguments with anybody. We are saying that we are determined to be men. We are determined to be people. We are saying, we are saying that we are God’s children. And if we are God’s children, we don’t have to live like we are forced to live.

He knew a kind of physics that somehow didn’t relate to the transphysics that we knew about. And that was the fact that there was a certain kind of fire that no water could put out. And we went before the firehoses.

we’d see the jailers looking through the windows being moved by our prayers and being moved by our words and our songs.

And so the first question that the priest asked, the first question that the Levite asked was, “If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?”

But then the Good Samaritan came by, and he reversed the question: “If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?”

some began to say the threats, or talk about the threats that were out, or what would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers.

Well, I don’t know what will happen now; we’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn’t matter with me now, because I’ve been to the mountaintop.

And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life—longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that...

And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over, and I’ve seen the promised land. ...

But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. And I’m happy tonight. ...

I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the...

I won’t have the fine and luxurious things of life to leave behind. But I just want to leave a committed life behind.

If I can help somebody as I pass along, if I can cheer somebody with a word or song, if I can show somebody he’s traveling wrong, then my living will not be in vain.

If I can do my duty as a Christian ought, if I can bring salvation to a world once wrought, if I can spread the message as the master taug...