A Quote by Jim Wallis

Martin Luther King Jr. really understood the role of the churches when he said, 'The church is not meant to be the master of the state.' We don't sort of take power and grab the levers of government and impose our agenda down people's throats.

Jim Wallis

Quote Topics

Agenda Church Churches Down Government Grab Impose King Levers Luther Martin Martin Luther King Martin Luther King Jr Master Meant Meant To Be Our People Power Really Role Said Sort State Take Understood

Quote Author

Jim Wallis
American - Writer
Born: June 4, 1948

Neither my great-grandfather an NAACP founder, my grandfather Dr. Martin Luther King, Sr. an NAACP leader, my father Rev. A. D. Williams King, nor my uncle Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. embraced the homosexual agenda that the current NAACP is attempting to label as a civil rights agenda.

Alveda King

They want a race war. We must be peaceful people. They are gonna poke and poke and poke, and our government is going to stand by and let them do it. We must be - we must take the role of Martin Luther King, because I do not believe that Martin Luther King believed in, "Kill all white babies."

Glenn Beck

I still hear people say that I should not be talking about the rights of lesbian and gay people and I should stick to the issue of racial justice. But I hasten to remind them that Martin Luther King Jr. said, 'Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.' I appeal to everyone who believes in Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream to make room at the table of brother- and sisterhood for lesbian and gay people.

Coretta Scott King

I remember back in the 1960s - late '50s, really - reading a comic book called 'Martin Luther King Jr. and the Montgomery Story.' Fourteen pages. It sold for 10 cents. And this little book inspired me to attend non-violence workshops, to study about Gandhi, about Thoreau, to study Martin Luther King, Jr., to study civil disobedience.

John Lewis

When white supremacy becomes institutional, it begins to harm the very people who are not simply outside of it because of their race, it begins to harm the folk who look like the folk who want to be in charge. Martin Luther King, Jr., understood this, Malcolm X understood this, James Baldwin really understood this.

Michael Eric Dyson

Martin Luther King really was a safety valve for white people. Any time it appeared that the black community was on the verge of really doing what we ought to do based on having been attacked, they put Martin Luther King on television. He was always saying, "We must use nonviolence. We must overcome hate with love." White people loved that. That's why they gave him a Nobel Prize. But when Martin Luther King started condemning the Vietnam War, that's when white people turned against him.

Ernie Chambers

Playing Martin Luther King Jr. was an honor for me on so many levels. It was the most I've ever prepared for a role.

Malik Yoba

Every now and then I think about my own death, and I think about my own funeral. [...] Every now and then I ask myself, 'What is it that I would want said?' I'd like somebody to mention that day, that Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to give his life serving others. I'd like for somebody to say that day, that Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to love somebody.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

I think if people really read Martin Luther King, Jr., then they would begin to understand what he really represented.

Coretta Scott King

I believe what Martin Luther King Jr. believed. You remember what the title of the March on Washington was? "Jobs and Freedom." What King understood is that you have to deal with the economic issues as well as the political issues and the civil rights issues.

Bernie Sanders

[Martin Luther King, Jr.] would want us to celebrate him, his birth, and his legacy by acting upon his agenda, by realizing the dream, by making the minimum wage a living wage, by having not just family and medical leave, but paid sick leave for our workers, [and] by having quality, affordable child care so that our families, the power of women can be unleashed in our economy and in our society.

Nancy Pelosi

It is the church's job, as Dr. [Martin Luther] King says, to be the conscience of the state, not the chaplain of the state.

Shane Claiborne

I'm not Martin Luther King. I can't be Martin Luther King. The only thing I can do is present what I feel the essence of Martin Luther King is.

Anthony Mackie

Martin Luther King Jr's agenda was not to help Negroes overcome American apartheid in the south. It was to make America democracy a better place, where everyday people, from poor people who were white and red and yellow and black and brown, would be able to live lives in decency and dignity.

Cornel West

The goal of Martin Luther King is to get the Negroes to forgive the people the people who have brutalized them for four hundred years, by lulling them to sleep and making them forget what those whites have done to them, but the masses of black people today don't go for what Martin Luther King is putting down.