“It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me, and I think that’s pretty important.”

At the center of non-violence stands the principle of love.

We must live together as brothers or perish together as fools.

Free at last, Free at last, Thank God almighty we are free at last.

There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right.

A right delayed is a right denied.

A man who won’t die for something is not fit to live.

Those who love peace must learn to organize as effectively as those who love war.

Whenever men and women straighten their backs up, they are going somewhere, because a man can’t ride your back unless it is bent

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

But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough can you see the stars.

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.

One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.

Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic.

The time is always right to do the right thing.

The choice is not between violence and nonviolence but between nonviolence and nonexistence.

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

Your mind is your predicament. It wants to be free of change. Free of pain, free of the obligations of life and death. But change is law and no amount of pretending will alter that reality.

Your mind is your predicament. It wants to be free of change. Free of pain, free of the obligations of life and death. But change is law and no amount of pretending will alter that reality.

Hatred, which could destroy so much, never failed to destroy the man who hated, and this was an immutable law.

Any fool can make a rule And any fool will mind it.

I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and Constitutions. But laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind.

That which is really beautiful has no need of anything; not more than law, not more than truth, not more than benevolence or modesty.

If you make 10,000 regulations you destroy all respect for the law.

He can who thinks he can, and he can’t who thinks he can’t. This is an inexorable, indisputable law.