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Martin Luther King, Jr.
(15 Jan 1929 - 4 Apr 1968)
American clergyman and civil rights activist who led a non-violent and effective Civil Rights movement from 1950 until his assassination in 1968. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, and his birthday has been commemorated as a federal holiday.
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Science Quotes by Martin Luther King, Jr. (16 quotes)
All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
In Strength to Love (1963), 71.
As marvelous as the stars is the mind of the person who studies them.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
Jr., in Voyage to the Great Attractor by Alan Dressier (1995).
Everybody can be great. Because anybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve … You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
Quoted in Kim Lim (ed.), 1,001 Pearls of Spiritual Wisdom: Words to Enrich, Inspire, and Guide Your Life (2014), 253
Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
Epigraph (without citation) in Pia Hansen, Mathematics Coaching Handbook: Working with Teachers to Improve Instruction (2009), 1.
If a person sweeps streets for a living, he should sweep them as Michelangelo painted, as Beethoven composed music, as Shakespeare wrote his plays.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
As quoted, without citation, in Patricia J. Raskin, Pathfinding: Seven Principles for Positive Living (2002), 102.
Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
Commenting on the way the Vietnam War was being conducted by the U.S. In 'The Man Who Was a Fool', Strength To Love (1963, 1981), 76.
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. They are complementary.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
In 'A Tough Mind and a Tender Heart', Strength To Love (1963), 3.
Science keeps religion from sinking into the valley of crippling irrationalism and paralyzing obscurantism. Religion prevents science from falling into the marsh of obsolete materialism and moral nihilism.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
In 'A Tough Mind and a Tender Heart', Strength To Love (1963), 3.
Segregation is the offspring of an illicit intercourse between injustice and immorality.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
Epigraph, without citation, in Al Condeluci, Interdependence: The Route to Community (1995), 183.
Segregationalists will even argue that God was the first segregationalist. “Red birds and blue birds don't fly together”, they contend. … They turn to some pseudo-scientific writing and argue that the Negro’s brain is smaller than the white man’s brain. They do not know, or they refuse to know that the idea of an inferior or superior race has been refuted by the best evidence of the science of anthropology. Great anthropologists, like Ruth Benedict, Margaret Mead, and Melville J. Herskovits, agree that, although there may be inferior and superior individuals within all races, there is no superior or inferior race. And segregationalists refuse to acknowledge that there are four types of blood, and these four types are found within every racial group.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
'Love in Action', Strength To Love (1963, 1981), 45-46.
Slavery in America was perpetuated not merely by human badness but also by human blindness. … Men convinced themselves that a system that was so economically profitable must be morally justifiable. … Science was commandeered to prove the biological inferiority of the Negro. Even philosophical logic was manipulated [exemplified by] an Aristotlian syllogism:
All men are made in the image of God;
God, as everyone knows, is not a Negro;
Therefore, the Negro is not a man.
All men are made in the image of God;
God, as everyone knows, is not a Negro;
Therefore, the Negro is not a man.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
'Love in Action', Strength To Love (1963, 1981), 44.
The Christians who engaged in infamous persecutions and shameful inquisitions were not evil men but misguided men. The churchmen who felt they had an edict from God to withstand the progress of science, whether in the form of a Copernican revolution or a Darwinian theory of natural selection, were not mischievous men but misinformed men. And so Christ’s words from the cross are written in sharp-edged terms across some of the most inexpressible tragedies of history: 'They know not what they do'.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
'Love in Action', Strength To Love (1963, 1981), 43.
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.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
In Strength to Love (1963, 1977), 15. Compare the earlier quote by Walter Bagehot, “One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea,” in 'The Age of Discussion', Physics and Politics (1869, 1916), 163.
Through our scientific and technological genius we’ve made of this world a neighborhood. And now through our moral and ethical commitment we must make of it a brotherhood. We must all learn to live together as brothers—or we will all perish together as fools.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
Commencement Address for Oberlin College, Ohio, 'Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution' ,(Jun 1965). Oberlin College website.
We have genuflected before the god of science only to find that it has given us the atomic bomb, producing fears and anxieties that science can never mitigate.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
In Strength to Love (1963).
We need not join the mad rush to purchase an earthly fallout shelter. God is our eternal fallout shelter.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
Quoted in Kim Lim (ed.), 1,001 Pearls of Spiritual Wisdom: Words to Enrich, Inspire, and Guide Your Life (2014), 144
Quotes by others about Martin Luther King, Jr. (1)
I’ve always been inspired by Dr. Martin Luther King, who articulated his Dream of an America where people are judged not by skin color but “by the content of their character.” In the scientific world, people are judged by the content of their ideas. Advances are made with new insights, but the final arbitrator of any point of view are experiments that seek the unbiased truth, not information cherry picked to support a particular point of view.
In letter (1 Feb 2013) to Energy Department employees announcing his decision not to serve a second term.
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
