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A Host Of Positive Psychological Changes Inevitably Will Result From Widespread Economic Security. 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. Personal Conflicts Among Husbands, Wives And Children Will Diminish When The Unjust Measurement Of Human Worth On The Scale Of Dollars Is Eliminated.

-Martin Luther King, Jr.

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A Host Of Positive

Martin Luther King, Jr.

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A Host Of Positive Psychological Changes Inevitably Will Result From Widespread Economic Security. 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. Personal Conflicts Among Husbands, Wives And Children Will Diminish When The Unjust Measurement Of Human Worth On The Scale Of Dollars Is Eliminated.

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It Is Our Experience That The Nation Doesn't Move Around Questions Of Genuine Equality For The Poor And For Black People Until It Is Confronted Massively, Dramatically In Terms Of Direct Action.

Brutality Was Imprisoned In A Lumious Glare Revealing The Naked Truth To The Whole World

If You Can't Fly Then Run, If You Can't Run Then Walk, If You Can't Walk Then Crawl, But Whatever You Do You Have To Keep Moving Forward.

Now There Is A Final Reason I Think That Jesus Says, 'love Your Enemies.' It Is This: That Love Has Within It A Redemptive Power. And There Is A Power There That Eventually Transforms Individuals.

Justice Is Love Correcting That Which Revolts Against Love.

No One Is Free Until We Are All Free.

We Must Develop And Maintain The Capacity To Forgive. He Who Is Devoid Of The Power To Forgive Is Devoid Of The Power To Love.

Nonviolence Is Absolute Commitment To The Way Of Love. Love Is Not Emotional Bash; It Is Not Empty Sentimentalism. It Is The Active Outpouring Of One's Whole Being Into The Being Of Another.

If We Are To Have Peace On Earth, Our Loyalties Must Become Ecumenical Rather Than Sectional. Our Loyalties Must Transcend Our Race, Our Tribe, Our Class, And Our Nation; And This Means We Must Develop A World Perspective.

These Are The Times For Real Choices And Not False Ones. We Are At The Moment When Our Lives Must Be Placed On The Line If Our Nation Is To Survive Its Own Folly. Every Man Of Humane Convictions Must Decide On The Protest That Best Suits His Convictions, But We Must All Protest.

We Must See The Great Distinction Between A Reform Movement And A Revolutionary Movement. We Are Called Upon To Raise Certain Basic Questions About The Whole Society . . . . What America Must Be Told Today Is That She Must Be Born Again. The Whole Structure Of American Life Must Be Changed.

What Good Is Having The Right To Sit At A Lunch Counter If You Can't Afford To Buy A Hamburger?

The Unemployed, Poverty-stricken White Man Must Be Made To Realize That He Is In The Very Same Boat With The Negro. Together, They Could Exert Massive Pressure On The Government To Get Jobs For All. Together, They Could Form A Grand Alliance. Together, They Could Merge All People For The Good Of All.

In Order To Love Your Enemies, You Must Begin By Analyzing Self.

Whenever You Are Engaged In Work That Serves Humanity And Is For The Building Of Humanity, It Has Dignity And It Has Worth.

Everybody Can Be Great...because Anybody Can Serve. You Don't Have To Have A College Degree To Serve.

The Most Dangerous Criminal May Be The Man Gifted With Reason, But With No Morals.

Like An Unchecked Cancer, Hate Corrodes The Personality And Eats Away Its Vital Unity. Hate Destroys A Man's Sense Of Values And His Objectivity. It Causes Him To Describe The Beautiful As Ugly And The Ugly As Beautiful, And To Confuse The True With The False And The False With The True.

We Can Walk Through The Darkest Night With The Radiant Conviction That All Things Work Together For The Good.

Working Together

If A Man Hasn't Found Anything Worth Dying For, He Hasn't Anything Worth Living For.

They Were Too God-intoxicated To Be "astronomically Intimidated." They Brought An End To Such Ancient Evils As Infanticide And Gladiatorial Contest.

We Know Of No More Crucial Civil Rights Issue Facing Congress Today Than The Need To Increase The Federal Minimum Wage And Extend Its Coverage.

A Time Comes When Silence Is Betrayal.

The Words 'bad Timing' Came To Be Ghosts Haunting Our Every Move In Birmingham. Yet People Who Used This Argument Were Ignorant Of The Background Of Our Planning...they Did Not Realize That It Was Ridiculous To Speak Of Timing When The Clock Of History Showed That The Negro Had Already Suffered One Hundred Years Of Delay.

It Is A Tragic Mix-up When The United States Spends 500,000 For Every Enemy Soldier Killed, And Only 53 Annually On The Victims Of Poverty.

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Never Succumb To The Temptation Of Becoming Bitter. As You Press For Justice, Be Sure To Move With Dignity And Discipline, Using Only The Instruments Of Love.

I Was Convinced That Worship At Its Best Is A Social Experience With People Of All Levels Of Life Coming Together To Realize Their Oneness And Unity Under God. Whenever The Church, Consciously Or Unconsciously, Caters To One Class It Loses The Spiritual Force Of The "whosoever Will, Let Him Come, Doctrine And Is In Danger Of Becoming A Little More Than A Social Club With A Thin Veneer Of Religiosity."

We Are Not Makers Of History. We Are Made By History.

Too Unconcerned To Love And Too Passionless To Hate, Too Detached To Be Selfish And Too Lifeless To Be Unselfish, Too Indifferent To Experience Joy And Too Cold To Express Sorrow, They Are Neither Dead Nor Alive; They Merely Exist.

It’s Wrong To Hate. It Always Has Been Wrong And It Always Will Be Wrong! It’s Wrong In America, It’s Wrong In Germany, It’s Wrong In Russia, It’s Wrong In China! It Was Wrong In Two Thousand B.c., And It’s Wrong In Nineteen Fifty-four A.d.! It Always Has Been Wrong, And It Always Will Be Wrong!

We Were Taking The Black Young Men Who Had Been Crippled By Our Society And Sending Them Eight Thousand Miles Away To Guarantee Liberties In Southeast Asia Which They Had Not Found In Southwest Georgia And East Harlem.

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There Are Two Types Of Laws: There Are Just Laws And There Are Unjust Laws... What Is The Difference Between The Two?...an Unjust Law Is A Man-made Code That Is Out Of Harmony With The Moral Law.

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Procrastination

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Keep Moving Forward

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Returning Hate For Hate Multiplies Hate, Adding Deeper Darkness To A Night Already Devoid Of Stars. Darkness Cannot Drive Out Darkness; Only Light Can Do That. Hate Cannot Drive Out Hate; Only Love Can Do That.

There Is A More Excellent Way, Of Love And Nonviolent Protest.

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Is Is Always Time To Do The Right Thing.

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Breaking Silence

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We Must Accept Finite Disappointment, But Never Lose Infinite Hope.

We Ain't Goin' Study War No More.

I Say To You Today, My Friends, So Even Though We Face The Difficulties Of Today And Tomorrow, I Still Have A Dream.

In This World Is A God Whose Matchless Strength Is A Fit Contrast To The Sordid Weakness Of Man.

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 With Values. The Two Are Not Rivals. They Are Complementary.

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I Am In Birmingham Because Injustice Is Here. Just As The Eighth Century Prophets Left Their Little Villages And Carried Their "thus Saith The Lord" Far Beyond The Boundaries Of Their Home Towns; And Just As The Apostle Paul Left His Little Village Of Tarsus And Carried The Gospel Of Jesus Christ To Practically Every Hamlet And City Of The Graeco-roman World, I Too Am Compelled To Carry The Gospel Of Freedom Beyond My Particular Home Town. Like Paul, I Must Constantly Respond To The Macedonian Call For Aid.

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The Great Military Leaders Of The Past Have Gone, Their Empires Have Crumbled And Burned To Ashes. But The Empire Of Jesus, Built Solidly And Majestically On The Foundation Of Love, Is Still Growing.

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We Are Called To Speak For The Weak, For The Voiceless, For The Victims Of Our Nation And For Those It Calls Enemy, For No Document From Human Hands Can Make These Humans Any Less Our Brothers And Sisters.

If The Negro Is To Achieve The Goal Of Integration, He Must Organize Himself Into A Militant And Nonviolent Mass Movement.

From My Christian Formation've Gotten My Ideals And Technique Gandhi Action

Courage Faces Fear And Thereby Masters It. Cowardice Represses Fear And Is Thereby Mastered By It.

As I Like To Say To The People In Montgomery: "the Tension In This City Is Not Between White People And Negro People. The Tension Is, At Bottom, Between Justice And Injustice, Between The Forces Of Light And The Forces Of Darkness.

Segregation, As Even The Segregationists Know In Their Hearts, Is Morally Wrong And Sinful. If It Weren't, The White South Would Not Be Haunted As It Is By A Deep Sense Of Guilt For What It Has Done To The Negro - Guilt For Patronizing Him, Degrading Him, Brutalizing Him, Depersonalizing Him, Thingifying Him; Guilt For Lying To Itself. This Is The Source Of The Schizophrenia That The South Will Suffer Until It Goes Through Its Crisis Of Conscience.

One Day We Will Learn That The Heart Can Never Be Totally Right If The Head Is Totally Wrong. Only Through The Bringing Together Of Head And Heart-intelligence And Goodness-shall Man Rise To A Fulfillment Of His True Nature.

I Have Condemned Any Organizer Of War, Regardless Of His Rank Or Nationality.

It Is No Longer A Choice Between Violence And Nonviolence In This World; It's Nonviolence Or Nonexistence. That Is Where We Are Today.

Hate Multiplies Hate, Violence Multiplies Violence, And Toughness Multiplies Toughness In A Descending Spiral Of Destruction.

I Was In The Kitchen Drinking Coffee When I Heard Coretta Cry, "martin, Martin, Come Quickly!" I Put Down My Cup And Ran Toward The Living Room. As I Approached The Front Window Coretta Pointed Joyfully To A Slowly Moving Bus: "darling, It's Empty!

To Accept Injustice Or Segregation Passively Is To Say To The Oppressor That His Actions Are Morally Right.

Time Has Been Used Destructively By People Of Ill Will Much More Than It Has Been Used Constructively By Those Of Good Will.

Mass Civil Disobedience Can Use Rage As A Constructive And Creative Force.

War Is A Poor Chisel To Carve Out Tomorrow.

I Still Have A Dream Today That One Day War Will Come To An End, That Men Will Beat Their Swords Into Plowshares And Their Spears Into Pruning Hooks, That Nations Will No Longer Rise Up Against Nations, Neither Will They Study War Any More.

To Deny A Man A Job Is To Say That A Man Has No Right To Exist.

There Is Something In This Universe That Justifies The Biblical Writer In Saying, "you Shall Reap What You Sow." This Is A Law-abiding Universe. This Is A Moral Universe. It Hinges On Moral Foundations. If We Are To Make Of This A Better World, We've Got To Go Back And Rediscover That Precious Value That We've Left Behind.

The Negro Has No Room To Make Any Substantial Compromises Because His Store Of Advantages Is Too Small. He Must Press Unrelentingly For Quality, Integrated Education Or His Whole Drive For Freedom Will Be Undermined By The Absence Of A Most Vital And Indispensable Element - Learning.

Join With The Earth And Each Other, To Bring New Life To The Land, To Restore The Waters, To Refresh The Air, To Renew The Forests, To Care For The Plants, To Protect The Creatures, To Celebrate The Seas, To Rejoice In The Sunlight, To Sing The Song Of The Stars, To Recall Our Destiny, To Renew Our Spirits, To Reinvigorate Our Bodies, To Recreate The Human Community, To Promote Justice And Peace, To Love Our Children And Love One Another, To Join Together As Many And Diverse Expressions Of One Loving Mystery, For The Healing Of The Earth And The Renewal Of All Life.

Segregation Is The Adultery Of An Illicit Intercourse Between Injustice And Immorality.

Those Of Us Who Love Peace Must Organize As Effectively As The War Hawks. As They Spread The Propaganda Of War, We Must Spread The Propaganda Of Peace.

Almost Always, The Creative Dedicated Minority Has Made The World Better.

The Use Of Violence In Our Struggle Would Be Both Impractical And Immoral. To Meet Hate With Retaliatory Hate Would Do Nothing But Intensify The Existence Of Evil In The Universe. Hate Begets Hate; Violence Begets Violence; Toughness Begets A Greater Toughness. We Must Meet The Forces Of Hate With The Power Of Love; We Must Meet Physical Force With Soul Force. Our Aim Must Never Be To Defeat Or Humiliate The White Man, But To Win His Friendship And Understanding.

We Can Dream Of An America, And A World, In Which Love And Not Money Are Civilization's Bottom Line.

If An American Is Concerned Only About His Nation, He Will Not Be Concerned About The Peoples Of Asia, Africa, Or South America. Is This Not Why Nations Engage In The Madness Of War Without The Slightest Sense Of Penitence? Is This Not Why The Murder Of A Citizen Of Your Own Nation Is A Crime, But The Murder Of Citizens Of Another Nation In War Is An Act Of Heroic Virtue?

Loving Your Enemies... Far From Being The Pious Injunction Of A Utopian Dreamer, This Demand Is An Absolute Necessity For The Survival Of Our Civilization. Yes It Is Love That Will Save Our World And Civilization; Love Even For Our Enemies.

Peace Is Not Simply The Absence Of Conflict, But The Existence Of Justice For All People.

Justice For All

Violence Is Anything That Denies Human Integrity, And Leads To Hopelessness And Helplessness.

If We Are Going To Achieve A Real Equality, The U.s. Will Have To Adopt A Modified Form Of Socialism.

Unity Has Never Meant Uniformity.

I Knew That America Would Never Invest The Necessary Funds Of Energies In Rehabilitation Of Its Poor As Long As Adventures Like Vietnam Continued To Draw Men And Skills And Money Like Some Demonic Destructive Suction Tube.

We Were All Involved In The Death Of John Kennedy. We Tolerated Hate; We Tolerated The Sick Stimulation Of Violence In All Walks Of Life; And We Tolerated The Differential Application Of Law, Which Said That A Man's Life Was Sacred Only If We Agreed With His Views.

But Alas! Science Cannot Now Rescue Us, For Even The Scientist Is Lost In The Terrible Midnight Of Our Age. Indeed, Science Gave Us The Very Instruments That Threaten To Bring Universal Suicide.

We Can Never Travel Beyond The Arms Of The Divine.

In A Sense We've Come To Our Nation's Capital To Cash A Check. When The Architects Of Our Republic Wrote The Magnificent Words Of The Constitution And The Declaration Of Independence, They Were Signing A Promissory Note To Which Every American Was To Fall Heir. This Note Was A Promise That All Men - Yes, Black Men As Well As White Men - Would Be Guaranteed The Unalienable Rights Of Life, Liberty And The Pursuit Of Happiness... America Has Given The Negro People A Bad Check, A Check Which Has Come Back Marked 'insufficient Funds.'

Pursuit Of Happiness

You Only Need A Heart Full Of Grace

I Know That Love Is Ultimately The Only Answer To Mankind's Problems. And I'm Going To Talk About It Everywhere I Go. I Know It Isn't Popular To Talk About It In Some Circles Today. I'm Not Talking About Emotional Bosh When I Talk About Love, I'm Talking About A Strong, Demanding Love.

Man Is Not Made For The State; The State Is Made For Man. To Deprive Man Of Freedom Is To Relegate Him To The Status Of A Thing, Rather Than Elevate Him To The Status Of A Person. Man Must Never Be Treated As A Means To The End Of The State, But Always As An End Within Himself.

In A Real Sense All Life Is Inter-related. All Men Are Caught In An Inescapable Network Of Mutuality, Tied In A Single Garment Of Destiny. Whatever Affects One Directly, Affects All Indirectly. I Can Never Be What I Ought To Be Until You Are What You Ought To Be, And You Can Never Be What You Ought To Be Until I Am What I Ought To Be... This Is The Inter-related Structure Of Reality.

Somewhere Somebody Must Have Some Sense. Men Must See That Force Begets Force, Hate Begets Hate, Toughness Begets Toughness. And It Is All A Descending Spiral, Ultimately Ending In Destruction For All And Everybody. Somebody Must Have Sense Enough And Morality Enough To Cut Off The Chain Of Hate And The Chain Of Evil In The Universe. And You Do That By Love.

It Really Boils Down To This: That All Life Is Interrelated. We Are All Caught In An Inescapable Network Of Mutuality, Tired Into A Single Garment Of Destiny. Whatever Affects One Destiny, Affects All Indirectly.

The Words 'i Will Forgive You, But I'll Never Forget What You've Done' Never Explain The Real Nature Of Forgiveness.

The Ultimate Measure Of A Man Is Not Where He Stands In Moments Of Comfort And Convenience, But Where He Stands In Times Of Challenge And Controversy. The True Neighbor Will Risk His Position, His Prestige, And Even His Life For The Welfare Of Others. In Dangerous Valleys And Hazardous Pathways, He Will Lift Some Bruised And Beaten Brother To A Higher And More Noble Life.

It's Not The Violence Of The Few That Scares Me, It's The Silence Of The Many

The Church Must Be Reminded That It Is Not The Master Or The Servant Of The State, But Rather The Conscience Of The State. It Must Be The Guide And The Critic Of The State, And Never Its Tool. If The Church Does Not Recapture Its Prophetic Zeal, It Will Become An Irrelevant Social Club Without Moral Or Spiritual Authority.

The Contemporary Church Is So Often A Weak, Ineffectual Voice With An Uncertain Sound. It Is So Often The Arch Supporter Of The Status Quo.

The Human Heart Is Like A Ship On A Stormy Sea Driven About By Winds Blowing From All Four Corners Of Heaven.

But There Is Another Way. And That Is To Organize Mass Non-violent Resistance Based On The Principle Of Love. It Seems To Me That This Is The Only Way As Our Eyes Look To The Future. As We Look Out Across The Years And Across The Generations, Let Us Develop And Move Right Here. We Must Discover The Power Of Love, The Power, The Redemptive Power Of Love. And When We Discover That We Will Be Able To Make Of This Old World A New World. We Will Be Able To Make Men Better. Love Is The Only Way.

My Study Of Gandhi Convinced Me That True Pacifism Is Not Nonresistance To Evil, But Nonviolent Resistance To Evil. Between The Two Positions, There Is A World Of Difference. Gandhi Resisted Evil With As Much Vigor And Power As The Violent Resister, But True Pacifism Is Not Unrealistic Submission To Evil Power. It Is Rather A Courageous Confrontation Of Evil By The Power Of Love. . . .

Good And Just Society Is Neither The Thesis Of Capitalism Nor The Antithesis Of Communism, But A Socially Conscious Democracy Which Reconciles The Truths Of Individualism And Collectivism.

We Must Be Concerned Not Merely About Who Murdered Them, But About The System, The Way Of Life, The Philosophy Which Produced The Murderers .

A True Revolution Of Values Will Soon Cause Us To Question The Fairness And Justice Of Many Of Our Present Policies.

Breaking Silence

Why Is The Church Always A Taillight Rather Than A Headlight?

I Was Not Afraid Of The Words Of The Violent, But Of The Silence Of The Honest.

The Recent Statement Of Your Executive Committee Are The Sentiments Of My Own Heart And I Found Myself In Full Accord When I Read Its Opening Lines: "a Time Comes When Silence Is Betrayal." That Time Has Come For Us In Relation To Vietnam. Some Of Us Who Have Already Begun To Break The Silence Of The Night Have Found That The Calling To Speak Is Often A Vocation Of Agony, But We Must Speak. We Must Speak With All The Humility That Is Appropriate To Our Limited Vision, But We Must Speak.

Sooner Or Later, All The Peoples Of The World Will Have To Discover A Way To Live Together In Peace, And Thereby Transform This Pending Cosmic Elegy Into A Creative Psalm Of Brotherhood.

I Could Never Again Raise My Voice Against The Violence Of The Oppressed, Without Having First Spoken Clearly To The Greatest Purveyor Of Violence In The World Today – My Own Government.

Riots Are The Voices Of The Unheard.

I'm Grateful To God That, Through The Negro Church, The Dimension Of Nonviolence Entered Our Struggle.

We Must Come To See That The End We Seek Is A Society At Peace With Itself, A Society That Can Live With Its Conscience.

We Still Have A Choice Today: Nonviolence Coesistence Or Violent Coannihilation.

It Does Not Matter How Long You Live, But How Well You Do It.

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.

My Place Is In The Sunlight Of Opportunity.

When Evil Men Burn And Bomb, Good Men Must Build And Bind.

Often The Oppressor Goes Along Unaware Of The Evil Involved In His Oppression So Long As The Oppressed Accepts It.

You Cannot Defect Form An Insight. You Cannot Unsee What You Have Seen.

I Question And Soul-search Constantly Into Myself To Be As Certain As I Can That I Am Fulfilling The True Meaning Of My Work, That I Am Maintaining My Sense Of Purpose, That I Am Holding Fast To My Ideals, That I Am Guiding My People In The Right Direction.

I Firmly Believe That The Gandhian Philosophy Of Nonviolent Resistance Is The Only Logical And Moral Approach To The Solution Of The Race Problem In The United States.

Ordinarily, A Person Leaving A Courtroom With A Conviction Behind Him Would Wear A Somber Face. But I Left With A Smile. I Knew That I Was A Convicted Criminal, But I Was Proud Of My Crime.

The Moral Arc Of The Universe Bends At The Elbow Of Justice.

While The Question Of Who Killed President Kennedy Is Important, The Question 'what Killed Him' Is More Important.

President Kennedy

We Must See That Peace Represents A Sweeter Music, A Cosmic Melody, That Is Far Superior To The Discords Of War.

Alienation Is A Form Of Living Death. It Is The Acid Of Despair That Dissolves Society.

If America's Soul Becomes Totally Poisoned, Part Of The Autopsy Must Read Vietnam. It Can Never Be Saved So Long As It Destroys The Hopes Of Men The World Over.

It Is Appalling That The Most Segregated Hour Of Christian America Is Eleven O'clock On Sunday Morning.

I Feel That The Time Is Always Right To Do What Is Right. Where Progress For The Negro In America Is Concerned, There Is A Tragic Misconception Of Time Among Whites. They Seem To Cherish A Strange, Irrational Notion That Something In The Very Flow Of Time Will Cure All Ills.

He (jesus) Knew That The Old Eye-for-eye Philosophy Would Leave Everyone Blind. He Did Not Seek To Overcome Evil With Evil. He Overcame Evil With Good. Although Crucified By Hate, He Responded With Aggressive Love.

As Marvelous As The Stars Is The Mind Of The Person Who Studies Them.

And You Know, It's Possible That The Priest And The Levite Looked Over That Man On The Ground And Wondered If The Robbers Were Still Around. Or It's Possible That They Felt That The Man On The Ground Was Merely Faking. And He Was Acting Like He Had Been Robbed And Hurt, In Order To Seize Them Over There, Lure Them There For Quick And Easy Seizure. And So 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?

Hatred And Bitterness Can Never Cure The Disease Of Fear; Only Love Can Do That. Hatred Paralyzes Life; Love Harmonies It. Hatred Darkens Life; Love Illuminates It.

I May Not Get There With You, But I Believe That We As A People Will Someday Reach The Promised Land.

Commit Yourself To The Noble Struggle For Human Rights. You Will Make A Greater Person Of Yourself, A Greater Nation Of Your Country And A Finer World To Live In.

So Let Freedom Ring From The Prodigious Hilltops Of New Hampshire.

I Have A Dream Speech

The Whole World Must See That Israel Must Exist And Has The Right To Exist, And Is One Of The Great Outposts Of Democracy In The World.

Nonviolence Is The Answer To The Crucial Political Moral Questions Of Our Time.

Foundation Of Love

You Cannot Solve The Problem By Turning To Communism, For Communism Is Based On An Ethical Relativism And A Metaphysical Materialism That No Christian Can Accept.

Every Crisis Has Both Its Dangers And Its Opportunities. Each Can Spell Either Salvation Or Doom.

If It Falls Your Lot To Be A Street Sweeper, Sweep Streets As Raphael Painted Pictures, Sweep Streets As Michelangelo Carved Marble, Sweep Streets As Beethoven Composed Music, Or Shakespeare Wrote Poetry.

What Seems So Necessary Today May Not Even Be Desirable Tomorrow.

It Is A Strangely Irrational Notion That There Is Something In The Very Flow Of Time That Will Inevitably Cure All Ills. Actually Time Is Neutral. It Can Be Used Either Destructively Or Constructively. I Am Coming To Feel That The People Of Ill Will Have Used Time Much More Effectively Than The People Of Good Will. We Will Have To Repent In This Generation Not Merely For The Vitriolic Words And Actions Of The Bad People, But For The Appalling Silence Of The Good People.

Seeing Is Not Always Believing.

The Way Of Acquiescence Leads To Moral And Spiritual Suicide. The Way Of Violence Leads To Bitterness In The Survivors And Brutality In The Destroyers. But, The Way Of Nonviolence Leads To Redemption And The Creation Of The Beloved Community.

Beloved Community

The Time Has Come For America To Hear The Truth About This Tragic War. In International Conflicts, The Truth Is Hard To Come By Because Most Nations Are Deceived About Themselves. Rationalizations And The Incessant Search For Scapegoats Are The Psychological Cataracts That Blind Us To Our Sins. But The Day Has Passed For Superficial Patriotism. He Who Lives With Untruth Lives In Spiritual Slavery.

One Of The Great Liabilities Of History Is That All Too Many People Fail To Remain Awake Through Great Periods Of Social Change.

Social Activism

It Will Be One Of The Tragedies Of Christian History If Future Historians Record That At The Height Of The Twentieth Century The Church Was One Of The Greatest Bulwarks Of White Supremacy.

We Shall Match Your Capacity To Inflict Suffering By Our Capacity To Endure Suffering. We Will Meet Your Physical Force With Soul Force. Do To Us What You Will And We Will Still Love You....bomb Our Homes And Threaten Our Children, And, As Difficult As It Is, We Will Still Love You.

The First Principle Of Value That We Need To Rediscover Is This: That All Reality Hinges On Moral Foundations. In Other Words, That This Is A Moral Universe, And That There Are Moral Laws Of The Universe Just As Abiding As The Physical Laws.

You Have Very Little Morally Persuasive Power With People Who Can Feel Your Underlying Contempt.

What The Negro Wants - And Will Not Stop Until He Gets - Is Absolute And Unqualified Freedom And Equality Here In This Land Of His Birth, And Not In Africa Or In Some Imaginary State. The Negro No Longer Will Be Tolerant Of Anything Less Than His Due Right And Heritage. He Is Pursuing Only That Which He Knows Is Honorably His. He Knows That He Is Right.

We Must Meet The Forces Of Hate With The Power Of Love.

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