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History Is A Great Teacher. Now Everyone Knows That The Labor Movement Did Not Diminish The Strength Of The Nation But Enlarged It. By Raising The Living Standards Of Millions, Labor Miraculously Created A Market For Industry And Lifted The Whole Nation To Undreamed Of Levels Of Production. Those Who Attack Labor Forget These Simple Truths, But History Remembers Them.

-Martin Luther King, Jr.

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History Is A Great

Martin Luther King, Jr.

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History Is A Great Teacher. Now Everyone Knows That The Labor Movement Did Not Diminish The Strength Of The Nation But Enlarged It. By Raising The Living Standards Of Millions, Labor Miraculously Created A Market For Industry And Lifted The Whole Nation To Undreamed Of Levels Of Production. Those Who Attack Labor Forget These Simple Truths, But History Remembers Them.

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Labour Movement

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Now Is The Time To Make Real The Promises Of Democracy. Now Is The Time To Rise From The Dark And Desolate Valley Of Segregation To The Sunlit Path Of Racial Justice. Now Is The Time To Lift Our Nation From The Quicksands Of Racial Injustice To The Solid Rock Of Brotherhood. Now Is The Time To Make Justice A Reality For All Of God’s Children.

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I Agree With Dante, That The Hottest Places In Hell Are Reserved For Those Who In A Period Of Moral Crisis Maintain Their Neutrality. There Comes A Time When Silence Becomes Betrayal.

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An Eye For An Eye Leaves Everybody Blind.

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A Man Who Won't Die For Something Is Not Fit To Live.

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

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I Have A Dream Speech

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Procrastination

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I Am Not Afraid Of The Word Tension.

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Breaking Silence

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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.

Faith Can Give Us Courage To Face The Uncertainties Of The Future.

I" Cannot Reach Fulfillment Without "thou." The Self Cannot Be Self Without Other Selves. Self-concern Without Other-concern Is Like A Tributary That Has No Outward Flow To The Ocean.

I Oppose The War In Vietnam Because I Love America. I Speak Out Against It Not In Anger But With Anxiety And Sorrow In My Heart, And Above All With A Passionate Desire To See Our Beloved Country Stand As A Moral Example Of The World.

We Must Pursue Peaceful End Through Peaceful Means.

I Would Suffer All The Humiliation, All The Torture, The Absolute Ostracism And Even Death, To Prevent Violence

Love Is Basic For The Very Survival Of Mankind. I'm Convinced That Love Is The Only Absolute Ultimately; Love Is The Highest Good. He Who Loves Has Somehow Discovered The Meaning Of Ultimate Reality. He Who Hates Does Not Know God; He Who Hates Has No Knowledge Of God. Love Is The Supreme Unifying Principle Of Life.

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

I Think In This Phase, After The Negro Emerges In And From The Desegregated Society, Then A Great Deal Of Time Must Be Spent In Improving Standards Which Lag Behind To A Large Extent Because Of Segregation,discrimination, And The Legacy Of Slavery.

The Major Problem Of Life Is Learning How To Handle The Costly Interruptions.

Moral Principles Have Lost Their Distinctiveness. For Modern Man, Absolute Right And Absolute Wrong Are A Matter Of What The Majority Is Doing.

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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.

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

The Ultimate Tragedy Is Not The Oppression And Cruelty By The Bad People But The Silence Over That By The Good People.

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.

Some People Are So Worn Down By The Yoke Of Oppression That They Give Up.

The Sweltering Summer Of The Negro's Legitimate Discontent Will Not Pass Until There Is An Invigorating Autumn Of Freedom And Equality.

This Is The Unusual Thing About Nonviolence -- Nobody Is Defeated, Everybody Shares In The Victory.

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

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As A Teenager I Had Never Been Able To Accept The Fact Of Having To Go To The Back Of A Bus Or Sit In The Segregated Section Of A Train. The First Time I Had Been Seated Behind A Curtain In A Dining Car, I Felt As If The Curtain Had Been Dropped On My Selfhood.

We Must Remember That Intelligence Is Not Enough. Intelligence Plus Character-that Is The Goal Of True Education. The Complete Education Gives One Not Only Power Of Concentration, But Worthy Objectives Upon Which To Concentrate.

Something Should Remind Us Once More That The Great Things In This Universe Are Things That We Never See.

A Nation That Will Keep People In Slavery For 244 Years Will "thingify" Them And Make Them Things. And Therefore, They Will Exploit Them And Poor People Generally Economically. And A Nation That Will Exploit Economically Will Have To Have Foreign Investments And Everything Else, And It Will Have To Use Its Military Might To Protect Them. All Of These Problems Are Tied Together. What I'm Saying Today Is That We Must Go From This Convention And Say, "america, You Must Be Born Again!"

Those Who Love Peace Must Learn To Organize As Effectively As Those Who Love War.

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

Like Paul, I Must Constantly Respond To The Macedonian Call For Aid.

Education Without Social Action Is A One-sided Value Because It Has No True Power Potential. Social Action Without Education Is A Weak Expression Of Pure Energy. Deeds Uninformed By Educated Thought Can Take False Directions. When We Go Into Action And Confront Our Adversaries, We Must Be As Armed With Knowledge As They. Our Policies Should Have The Strength Of Deep Analysis Beneath Them To Be Able To Challenge The Clever Sophistries Of Our Opponents.

Why Should There Be Hunger And Deprivation In Any Land, In Any City, At Any Table, When Man Has The Resources And The Scientific Know-how To Provide All Mankind With The Basic Necessities Of Life? There Is No Deficit In Human Resources. The Deficit Is In Human Will.

As We Have Seen, The First Public Expression Of Disenchantment With Nonviolence Arose Around The Question Of 'self-defense.' In A Sense This Is A False Issue, For The Right To Defend One's Home And One's Person When Attacked Has Been Guaranteed Through The Ages By Common Law.

Now Let Me Say That The Next Thing We Must Be Concerned About If We Are To Have Peace On Earth And Good Will Toward Men Is The Nonviolent Affirmation Of The Sacredness Of All Human Life. Every Man Is Somebody Because He Is A Child Of God.

A Nation That Continues Year After Year To Spend More Money On Military Defense Than On Programs Of Social Uplift Is Approaching Spiritual Doom.

I Am Convinced That...in The Struggle For Righteousness Man Has Cosmic Companionship.

I Just Want To Do God's Will. And He's Allowed Me To Go To The Mountain. And I've Looked Over, And I've Seen The Promised Land! I May Not Get There With You, But I Want You To Know Tonight That We As A People Will Get To The Promised Land.

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.

If A Person Sweeps Streets For A Living, He Should Sweep Them As Michelangelo Painted, As Beethoven Composed, As Shakespear Wrote.

As A Young Man With Most Of My Life Ahead Of Me, I Decided Early To Give My Life To Something Eternal And Absolute. Not To These Little Gods That Are Here Today And Gone Tomorrow. But To God Who Is The Same Yesterday, Today, And Forever.

The Potential Beauty Of Human Life Is Constantly Made Ugly By Man's Ever Recurring Song Of Retaliation. The Oceans Of History Are Made Turbulent By The Ever Rising Tides Of Revenge. Man Has Never Risen Above The Injunction Of The Lex Talionis: "life For Life, Eye For Eye, Tooth For Tooth, Hand For Hand, Foot For Foot." In Spite Of The Fact That The Law Of Revenge Solves No Social Problems, Men Continue To Follow Its Disastrous Leading. History Is Cluttered With The Wreckage Of Nations And Individuals That Pursued This Self-defeating Path.

I Think The First Reason That We Should Love Our Enemies, And I Think This Was At The Very Center Of Jesus' Thinking, Is This: That Hate For Hate Only Intensifies The Existence Of Hate And Evil In The Universe.

It Was Argued That The Negro Was Inferior By Nature Because Of Noah's Curse Upon The Children Of Ham.... The Greatest Blasphemy Of The Whole Ugly Process Was That The White Man Ended Up Making God His Partner In The Exploitation Of The Negro.

The White Poor Also Suffer Deprivation And The Humiliation Of Poverty If Not Of Color. They Are Chained By The Weight Of Discrimination Though Its Badge Of Degradation Does Not Mark Them. It Corrupts Their Lives, Frustrates Their Opportunities And Withers Their Education. In One Sense It Is More Evil For Them Because It Has Confused So Many By Prejudice That They Have Supported Their Own Oppressors.

The Whirlwinds Of Revolt Will Continue To Shake The Foundations Of Our Nation Until The Bright Day Of Justice Emerges.

I Have A Dream Speech

Means We Use Must Be As Pure As The Ends We Seek.

Mankind's Survival Is Dependent On Man's Ability To Solve The Problems Of Racial Injustice, Poverty, And War; The Solution Of These Problems Is In Turn Dependent Upon Man's Squaring His Moral Progress With His Scientific Progress, And Learning The Practical Art Of Living In Harmony.

It Is Precisely Because Education Is The Road To Equality And Citizenship, That It Has Been Made More Elusive For Negroes Than Many Other Rights. The Walling Off Of Negroes From Equal Education Is Part Of The Historical Design To Submerge Him In Second Class Status. Therefore, As Negroes Have Struggled To Be Free They Have Had To Fight For The Opportunity For A Decent Education.

Ultimately A Great Nation Is A Compassionate Nation.

A Religion True To Its Nature Must Also Be Concerned About Man's Social Conditions....a Ny Religion That Professes To Be Concerned With The Souls Of Men And Is Not Concerned With The Slums That Damn Them, The Economic Conditions That Strangle Them, And The Social Conditions That Cripple Them Is A Dry-as-dust Religion.

Had It Not Been For The Ministry Of My Good Friend Dr. Billy Graham, My Work In The Civil Rights Movement Would Not Have Been As Successful As It Has Been.

When Evil Men Plot, Good Men Must Plan. When Evil Men Burn And Bomb, Good Men Must Build And Bind. When Evil Men Shout Ugly Words Of Hatred, Good Men Must Commit Themselves To The Glories Of Love.

Peace Is Not Merely The Absence Of War But The Presence Of Justice, Of Law, Of Order —in Short, Of Government.

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

We All Can't Be Famous But We Can All Be Great And We Become Great When We Serve Others

There Is Nothing More Tragic Than To Find An Individual Bogged Down In The Length Of Life, Devoid Of Breadth.

We Stand In Life At Midnight; We Are Always At The Threshold Of A New Dawn.

Our Age Is One Of Guided Missiles And Unguided Men.

Before You Finish Eating Breakfast In The Morning, You've Depended On More Than Half Of The World.

The Strong Man Holds In A Living Blend Strongly Marked Opposites. The Idealists Are Not Usually Realistic, And The Realists Are Not Usually Idealistic. The Militant Are Not Generally Known To Be Passive, Nor The Passive To Be Militant. Seldom Are The Humble Self-assertive, Or The Self-assertive Humble. But Life At It's Best Is A Creative Synthesis Of Opposites In Fruitful Harmony.

You Can Have No Influence Over Those For Whom You Have Underlying Contempt.

Nonviolent Communication

Our Lives Begin To End The Day We Become Silent About Things That Matter.

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.

[malcolm X] Had Said A Great Deal About Nonviolence, Criticizing Nonviolence, And Saying That I Approved Of Negro Men And Women Being Bitten By Dogs And The Fire Hoses, And I Say, Say Go On And Not Defend Yourself. I Think This Kind Of Response Grew Out Of The Build Up, All Of The Talk About My Being A Sort Of Polished Uncle Tom.

It Is Incontestable And Deplorable That Negroes Have Committed Crimes; But They Are Derivative Crimes. They Are Born Of The Greater Crimes Of The White Society.

There Is Nothing But A Lack Of Social Vision To Prevent Us From Paying An Adequate Wage To Every American Citizen Whether He Be A Hospital Worker, Laundry Worker, Maid Or Day Laborer

Without Love, Benevolence Becomes Egotism.

I'm Concerned About Justice. I'm Concerned About Brotherhood. I'm Concerned About Truth. And When One Is Concerned About These, He Can Never Advocate Violence.

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.

I Refuse To Accept The Cynical Notion That Nation After Nation Must Spiral Down A Militaristic Stairway Into The Hell Of Thermonuclear Destruction... I Believe That Even Amid Today's Mortar Bursts And Whining Bullets, There Is Still Hope For A Brighter Tomorrow... I Still Believe That One Day Mankind Will Bow Before The Altars Of God And Be Crowned Triumphant Over War And Bloodshed.

World Peace Through Nonviolent Means Is Neither Absurd Nor Unattainable. All Other Methods Have Failed. Thus We Must Begin Anew. Nonviolence Is A Good Starting Point. Those Of Us Who Believe In This Method Can Be Voices Of Reason, Sanity, And Understanding Amid The Voices Of Violence, Hatred, And Emotion. We Can Very Well Set A Mood Of Peace Out Of Which A System Of Peace Can Be Built.

Whatever Affects One Directly Affects All Indirectly.

I Choose To Give My Life For Those Who Have Been Left Out Of The Sunlight Of Opportunity

One Day We Will Learn That The Heart Can Never Be Totally Right When The Head Is Totally Wrong

Wisdom Born Of Experience Should Tell Us That War Is Obsolete. There May Have Been A Time When War Served As A Negative Good By Preventing The Spread And Growth Of An Evil Force If We Assume That Life Is Worth Living, If We Assume That Mankind Has The Right To Survive, Then We Must Find An Alternative To War.

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.

Whatever Your Life's Work Is, Do It Well. A Man Should Do His Job So Well That The Living, The Dead, And The Unborn Could Do It No Better.

The Truth May Hurt, But Love Helps Ease The Pain.

Everyone Has An Opportunity To Be Great Because Everyone Has An Opportunity To Serve.

Education Without Morals Is Like A Ship Without A Compass, Merely Wandering Nowhere.

Darkness Cannot Be Overcome With More Darkness, Only With Light. Violence Cannot Be Overcome With More Violence, Only With Peace.

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.

It Is Quite Easy For Me To Think Of A God Of Love Mainly Because I Grew Up In A Family Where Love Was Central And Where Lovely Relationships Were Ever Present.

Actually, We Who Engage In Nonviolent Direct Action Are Not The Creators Of Tension. We Merely Bring To The Surface The Hidden Tension That Is Already Alive. We Bring It Out In The Open, Where It Can Be Seen And Dealt With. Like A Boil That Can Never Be Cured So Long As It Is Covered Up But Must Be Opened With An Its Ugliness To The Natural Medicines Of Air And Light, Injustice Must Be Exposed, With All The Tension Its Exposure Creates, To The Light Of Human Conscience And The Air Of National Opinion Before It Can Be Cured.

We Come Humbly To Say To The Men In The Forefront Of Our Government That The Civil Rights Issue Is Not An Ephemeral, Evanescent Domestic Issue That Can Be Kicked About By Reactionary Guardians Of The Status Quo; It Is Rather An Eternal Moral Issue Which May Well Determine The Destiny Of Our Nation In The Ideological Struggle With Communism. The Hour Is Late. The Clock Of Destiny Is Ticking Out. We Must Act Now, Before It Is Too Late.

It Is Cheerful To God When You Rejoice Or Laugh From The Bottom Of Your Heart.

I'll Tell You, I've Seen The Lightning Flash. I've Heard The Thunder Roll. I Felt Sin-breakers Dashing, Trying To Conquer My Soul. But I Heard The Voice Of Jesus Saying Still To Fight On.

The Universe Is On The Side Of Justice

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.

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?

Never, Never Be Afraid To Do What's Right, Especially If The Well-being Of A Person Or Animal Is At Stake. Society's Punishments Are Small Compared To The Wounds We Inflict On Our Soul When We Look The Other Way.

Without Love, There Is No Reason To Know Anyone, For Love Will In The End Connect Us To Our Neighbors, Our Children And Our Hearts.

The Greatest Purveyor Of Violence In The World : My Own Government, I Can Not Be Silent.

Man Was Born Into Barbarism When Killing His Fellow Man Was A Normal Condition Of Existence. He Became Endowed With A Conscience. And He Has Now Reached The Day When Violence Toward Another Human Being Must Become As Abhorrent As Eating Another's Flesh.

Justice Denied Anywhere Diminishes Justice Everywhere.

Violence Often Brings About Momentary Results.

You Can Kill The Dreamer, But You Can't Kill The Dream.

And So We Shall Have To Do More Than Register And More Than Vote; We Shall Have To Create Leaders Who Embody Virtues We Can Respect, Who Have Moral And Ethical Principles We Can Applaud With Enthusiasm.

Ethical Principles

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

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?

God Made The World From Nothing, And If We Can Be Nothing, Then God Can Make Something Of Us.

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.

A Just Law Is A Man-made Code That Squares With The Moral Law, Or The Law Of God. An Unjust Law Is A Code That Is Out Of Harmony With The Moral Law.

Jazz Speaks For Life. The Blues Tell The Story Of Life's Difficulties, And If You Think For A Moment, You Will Realize That They Take The Hardest Realities Of Life And Put Them Into Music, Only To Come Out With Some New Hope Or Sense Of Triumph.

There's Another Reason Why You Should Love Your Enemies, And That Is Because Hate Distorts The Personality Of The Hater. We Usually Think Of What Hate Does For The Individual Hated Or The Individuals Hated Or The Groups Hated. But It Is Even More Tragic, It Is Even More Ruinous And Injurious To The Individual Who Hates. [...] For The Person Who Hates, The True Becomes False And The False Becomes True. That's What Hate Does.

Another Way That You Love Your Enemy Is This: When The Opportunity Presents Itself For You To Defeat Your Enemy, That Is The Time Which You Must Not Do It.

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.

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.

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

Courage Faces Fear And Thereby Masters It

The Old Law Of An Eye For An Eye Leaves Everyone Blind. It Destroys Communities And Makes Humanity Impossible. It Creates Bitterness In The Survivors And Brutality In The Destroyers... In Winning Our Freedom, We Will So Appeal To You Heart And Conscience That We Will Win You In The Process.

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