Martin Luther King Jr on Wealth Quotes

"The curse of poverty has no justification in our age. It is socially as cruel and blind as the practice of cannibalism at the dawn of civilization."

"I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values."

"The good life is a process, not a state of being. It is a direction, not a destination."

"Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty."

"Life's most persistent and urgent question is, 'What are you doing for others?'"

"The dignity of the individual will flourish when the decisions concerning his life are in his own hands, when he has the means to seek self-improvement."

"True peace is not merely the absence of tension: it is the presence of justice."

"A riot is the language of the unheard."

"Call it democracy, or call it democratic socialism, but there must be a better distribution of wealth within this country for all God's children. Speech to the Negro American Labor Council (May 1965), as quoted in From Civil Rights to Human Rights : Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Struggle for Economic Justice (2009), by Thomas F. Jackson, p. 230"

"The poor in our countries have been shut out of our minds, and driven from the mainstream of our societies, because we have allowed them to become invisible."

"We must work rapidly and effectively to see that the gap between the haves and the have-nots is closed."

"I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity."

"Let us be dissatisfied until America will no longer have a high blood pressure of creeds and an anemia of deeds. Let us be dissatisfied until the tragic walls that separate the outer city of wealth and comfort from the inner city of poverty and despair shall be crushed by the battering rams of the forces of justice."

"We must develop a federal program of public works, retraining, and jobs for all so that none will have to cause our nation to feel a sense of shame."

"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."

"We must come to see that the whole of the American economy is based on a kind of socialism for the rich and rugged free enterprise for the poor."

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

"We must honestly admit that capitalism has often left a gap between superfluous wealth and abject poverty."

"[N]o matter where you stand, no matter how much popularity you have, no matter how much education you have, no matter how much money you have, you have it because somebody in this universe helped you to get it. And when you see that, you can't be arrogant, you can't be supercilious. You discover that you have your position because of the events of history and because of individuals in the background making it possible for you to stand there."

"Philanthropy is commendable, but it must not cause the philanthropist to overlook the circumstances of economic injustice which make philanthropy necessary."

"We must recognize that we can’t solve our problem now until there is a radical redistribution of economic and political power."

"We are dealing with issues that cannot be solved without the nation spending billions of dollars and undergoing a radical redistribution of economic power."

"True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring."

"There is nothing new about poverty. What is new, however, is that we have the techniques and the resources to get rid of it."

"I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality."

"The problem of poverty is not only that of the unemployed but also the person who is working in a full-time job and getting part-time income."

"When we look at the modern world, we see that the wealth of the world is concentrated in the hands of a few."

"We must move from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society."

"Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be."

"The contemporary tendency in our society is to base our sense of worth on our material possessions."

"A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom."

"This man talked like he could build the barns by himself, like he could till the soil by himself. And he failed to realize that wealth is always a result of the commonwealth."

"In a real sense all life is inter-related. All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality."