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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.

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Science Keeps Religion From

Martin Luther King, Jr.

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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.

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

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Black Power Is A Nihilistic Philosophy Born Out Of The Conviction That The Negro Can't Win... The View That American Society Is So Hopelessly Corrupt And Enmeshed In Evil That There Is No Possibility Of Salvation From Within.

We Must Move Past Indecision To Action. We Must Find New Ways To Speak For Peace In Vietnam And For Justice Throughout The Developing World, A World That Borders On Our Doors. If We Do Not Act, We Shall Surely Be Dragged Down The Long, Dark, And Shameful Corridors Of Time Reserved For Those Who Possess Power Without Compassion, Might Without Morality, And Strength Without Sight.

My Soul Is Too Glad And Too Great To Be At Heart The Enemy Of Any Man

This Hour In History Needs A Dedicated Circle Of Transformed Nonconformists. Our Planet Teeters On The Brink Of Annihilation; Dangerous Passions Of Pride, Hatred, And Selfishness Are Enthroned In Our Lives; And Men Do Reverence Before False Gods Of Nationalism And Materialism. The Saving Of Our World From Pending Doom Will Come, Not Through The Complacent Adjustment Of The Conforming Majority, But Through The Creative Maladjustment Of A Nonconforming Minority.

But I Say To You, My Friends, There Are Certain Things In Our Nation And In The World Which I Am Proud To Be Maladjusted And Which I Hope All Men Of Good-will Will Be Maladjusted Until The Good Societies Realize.

The Richer We Have Become Materially, The Poorer We Become Morally And Spiritually. We Have Learned To Fly In The Air Like Birds And Swim In The Sea Like Fish, But We Have Not Learned The Simple Art Of Living Together As Brothers.

Don't Let Anybody Take Your Manhood.

The Failures Of The Past Must Not Be An Excuse For The Inaction Of The Present And The Future.

Nonviolence Means Avoiding Not Only External Physical Violence But Also Internal Violence Of Spirit. You Not Only Refuse To Shoot A Man, But You Refuse To Hate Him.

I Am What I Am Because Of Who We All Are.

Perhaps The Worst Sin In Life Is Knowing Right And Not Doing It.

You Are Resisting, But You've Come To See That Tactically As Well As Morally, It Is Better To Be Nonviolent.if One Would, Didn't Want To Deal With The Moral Questions, It Would Just Be Impractical For The Negro To Talk About Making His Struggle A Violent One.

Nothing Is So Much Needed As A Secure Family Life For A People Seeking To Rise Out Of Poverty And Backwardness.

One Has A Moral Responsibility To Disobey Unjust Laws.

Whenever Men And Women Straighten Their Backs Up, They Are Going Somewhere, Because A Man Can't Ride Your Back Unless It Is Bent

President Lyndon Johnson's High Spirits Were Marked As He Circulated Among The Many Guests Whom He Had Invited To Witness An Event He Confidently Felt To Be Historic, The Signing Of The 1965 Voting Rights Act.... The Bill That Lay On The Polished Mahogany Desk Was Born In Violence In Selma, Alabama, Where A Stubborn Sheriff... Had Stumbled Against The Future.

In Our Struggle Against Racial Segregation In Montgomery, Alabama, I Came To See At A Very Early Stage That A Synthesis Of Gandhi's Method Of Nonviolence And The Christian Ethic Of Love Is The Best Weapon Available To Negroes For This Struggle For Freedom And Human Dignity. It May Well Be That The Gandhian Approach Will Bring About A Solution To The Race Problem In America. His Spirit Is A Continual Reminder To Oppressed People That It Is Possible To Resist Evil And Yet Not Resort To Violence.

There Is A Type Of Constructive Nonviolent Tension That Is Necessary For Growth

History Is The Long And Tragic Story Of The Fact That Privileged Groups Seldom Give Up Their Privileges Voluntarily.

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.

Property Is Intended To Serve Life, And No Matter How Much We Surround It With Rights And Respect, It Has No Personal Being. It Is Part Of The Earth Man Walks On. It Is Not Man.

Most Of These People Will Never Make The Headlines And Their Names Will Not Appear In Who's Who. Yet When Years Have Rolled Past And When The Blazing Light Of Truth Is Focused On This Marvelous Age In Which We Live - Men And Women Will Know And Children Will Be Taught That We Have A Finer Land, A Better People, A More Noble Civilization - Because These Humble Children Of God Were Willing To Suffer For Righteousness' Sake.

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.

You Can't Talk About Solving The Economic Problem Of The Negro Without Talking About Billions Of Dollars. You Can't Talk About Ending The Slums Without First Saying Profit Must Be Taken Out Of The Slums. You're Really Tampering And Getting On Dangerous Ground Because You Are Messing With Folk Then. You Are Messing With Captains Of Industry. Now This Means That We Are Treading In Difficult Water, Because It Really Means That We Are Saying That Something Is Wrong With Capitalism.

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.

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, Racism, And Militarism... We Are Now Faced With The Fact, My Friends, That Tomorrow Is Today. We Are Confronted With The Fierce Urgency Of Now.

I've Seen Too Much Hate To Want To Hate, Myself.

Slaves Do Not Always Welcome Their Deliverers. They Become Accustomed To Being Slaves. They Would Rather Gear Those Ills They Have

Like An Unchecked Cancer, Hate Corrodes The Personality And Eats Away Its Vital Unity.

There Is Little Hope For Us Until We Become Tough-minded Enough To Break Loose From The Shackles Of Prejudice, Half-truths, And Down-right Ignorance.

True Compassion Is More Than Throwing A Coin To A Beggar. It Demands Of Our Humanity That If We Live In A Society That Produces Beggars, We Are Morally Commanded To Restructure That Society.

There Is Nothing In All The World Greater Than Freedom. It Is Worth Paying For; It Is Worth Going To Jail For. I Would Rather Be A Free Pauper Than A Rich Slave. I Would Rather Die In Abject Poverty With My Convictions Than Live In Inordinate Riches With The Lack Of Self Respect.

If The Cruelties Of Slavery Could Not Stop Us, The Opposition We Now Face Will Surely Fail. Because The Goal Of America Is Freedom, Abused And Scorned Tho' We May Be, Our Destiny Is Tied Up With America's Destiny.

We Have Guided Missiles And Misguided Men.

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

We Are Now Faced With The Fact, My Friends, That Tomorrow Is Today. We Are Confronted With The Fierce Urgency Of Now.

Breaking Silence

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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.

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

If Your Opponent Has A Conscience, Then Follow Gandhi And Nonviolence. But If Your Enemy Has No Conscience Like Hitler, Then Follow Bonhoeffer.

We Must Follow Nonviolence And Love.

This Faith Transforms The Whirlwind Of Despair Into A Warm And Reviving Breeze Of Hope. The Words Of A Motto Which A Generation Ago Were Commonly Found On The Wall In The Homes Of Devout Persons Need To Be Etched On Our Hearts: Fear Knocked At The Door. Faith Answered. There Was No One There.

A World War - God Forbid! - Will Leave Only Smoldering Ashes As A Mute Testimony Of A Human Race Whose Folly Led Inexorably To Untimely Death. Yet There Are Those Who Sincerely Feel That Disarmament Is An Evil And International Negotiation Is An Abominable Waste Of Time.

Life's Most Persistent And Urgent Question Is, 'what Are You Doing For Others?'

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.

He Who Is Devoid Of The Power To Forgive Is Devoid Of The Power To Love.

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I Came To The Conclusion That There Is An Existential Moment In Your Life When You Must Decide To Speak For Yourself; Nobody Else Can Speak For You.

Perhaps...the Nation And The World Are In Dire Need Of Creative Extremists.

Political Extremism

Everything That We See Is A Shadow Cast By That Which We Do Not See.

I Am Cognizant Of The Interrelatedness Of All Communities And States. I Cannot Sit Idly By In Atlanta And Not Be Concerned About What Happens In Birmingham. Injustice Anywhere Is A Threat To Justice Everywhere. We Are Caught In An Inescapable Network Of Mutuality, Tied In A Single Garment Of Destiny. Whatever Affects One Directly, Affects All Indirectly. Never Again Can We Afford To Live With The Narrow, Provincial "outside Agitator" Idea.

I Would Rather Be A Man Of Conviction Than A Man Of Conformity

Riots Are The Voices Of The Unheard.

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

I Imagine You Already Know That I Am Much More Socialistic In My Economic Theory Than Capitalistic.

I Was Much More Afraid In Montgomery When I Had A Gun In My House. When I Decided That I Couldn’t Keep A Gun, I Came Face-to-face With The Question Of Death And I Dealt With It. From That Point On, I No Longer Needed A Gun Nor Have I Been Afraid. Had We Become Distracted By The Question Of My Safety We Would Have Lost The Moral Offensive And Sunk To The Level Of Our Oppressors.

All Men Are Interdependent. Every Nation Is An Heir Of A Vast Treasury Of Ideas And Labor To Which Both The Living And The Dead Of All Nations Have Contributed. Whether We Realize It Or Not, Each Of Us Lives Eternally 'in The Red.' We Are Everlasting Debtors To Known And Unknown Men And Women.

A Man Who Hasn't Found Anything He'd Die For Doesn't Deserve To Live.

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Courage Is The Power Of The Mind To Overcome Fear.

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

From The Prodigious Hilltops Of New Hampshire, Let Freedom Ring. From The Mighty Mountains Of New York, Let Freedom Ring. From The Heightening Alleghenies Of Pennsylvania, Let Freedom Ring. But Not Only That: Let Freedom Ring From Every Hill And Molehill Of Mississippi.

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

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

Freedom Only Comes Through Persistent Revolt, Through Persistent Agitation, Through Persistently Rising Up Against The System Of Evil.

When Our Days Become Dreary With Low Hovering Clouds Of Despair, And When Our Nights Become Darker Than A Thousand Midnights, Let Us Remember That There Is A Creative Force In This Universe, Working To Pull Down The Gigantic Mountains Of Evil, A Power That Is Able To Make A Way Out Of No Way And Transform Dark Yesterdays Into Bright Tomorrows. Let Us Realize The Arc Of The Moral Universe Is Long But It Bends Toward Justice.

A Woman Can Have A Smile, And A Woman Can Have A Large Backside, But I Have Been To The Mountain And I Am Here To Tell You That When A Woman Has Both Of Those Things She Is Not To Be Trusted.

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

For You Will Never Be What You Ought To Be Until They [your Fellow Humans] Are What They Ought To Be.

There May Be A Conflict Between Softminded Religionists And Toughminded Scientists, But Not Between Science And Religion.

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.

Our Nation Was Born In Genocide When It Embraced The Doctrine That The Original American, The Indian, Was An Inferior Race. ... We Are Perhaps The Only Nation Which Tried As A Matter Of National Policy To Wipe Out Its Indigenous Population. Moreover, We Elevated That Tragic Experience Into A Noble Crusade. Indeed, Even Today We Have Not Permitted Ourselves To Reject Or To Feel Remorse For This Shameful Episode.

Let The Negro March. Let Him Make Pilgrimages To City Hall. Let Him Go On Freedom Rides. And Above All, Make An Effort To Understand Why He Must Do This. For If His Frustration And Despair Are Allowed To Continue Piling Up, Millions Of Negroes Will Seek Solace And Security In Black-nationalist Ideologies. And This, Inevitably, Would Lead To A Frightening Racial Nightmare.

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

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.

He Should Sweep Streets So Well That All The Host Of Heaven And Earth Will Pause To Say, 'here Lives A Great Street-sweeper Who Did His Job Well'

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.

I Said To My Children, 'i'm Going To Work And Do Everything That I Can Do To See That You Get A Good Education. I Don't Ever Want You To Forget That There Are Millions Of God's Children Who Will Not And Cannot Get A Good Education, And I Don't Want You Feeling That You Are Better Than They Are. For You Will Never Be What You Ought To Be Until They Are What They Ought To Be.

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

The Arc Of The Moral Universe Is Long But It Bends Toward Justice.

I Plan To Stand By Nonviolence, Because I Have Found It To Be A Philosophy Of Life That Regulates Not Only My Dealings In The Struggle For Racial Justice, But Also My Dealings With People, And With My Own Self.

If You Have Not Discovered Something You Are Willing To Die For, Then You Are Not Fit To Live.

When The Negro Finds The Courage To Be Free, He Faces Dogs And Guns And Clubs And Fire Hoses Totally Unafraid, And The White Men With Those Dogs, Guns, Clubs And Fire Hoses See That The Negro They Have Traditionally Called "boy" Has Become A Man.

We Must Recognize That We Can't Solve Our Problems Now Until There Is A Radical Redistribution Of Economic And Political Power.... A Radical Restructuring Of The Architecture Of American Society.

In Spite Of Its Glowing Talk About The Welfare Of The Masses, Communism's Methods And Philosophy Strip Man Of His Dignity And Worth, Leaving Him As Little More Than A Depersonalized Cog In The Ever-turning Wheel Of The State.

Are You Able To Accept Blows Without Retaliating?" And "are You Able To Endure The Ordeals Of Jail?"

We Can Either Walk The Highroad Of Brotherhood Or The Low Road Of Man's Inhumanity To Man.

Inhumanity To Man

Babies, We Are Told, Are The Latest News From Heaven.

Love Is The Only Creative, Redemptive, Transforming Power, In The Universe.

The Christian Faith Makes It Possible For Us Nobly To Accept That Which Cannot Be Changed, And To Meet Disappointments And Sorrow With An Inner Poise, And To Absorb The Most Intense Pain Without Abandoning Our Sense Of Hope.

We Can Never Travel Beyond The Arms Of The Divine.

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.

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.

Justice Denied Anywhere Diminishes Justice Everywhere.

Violence Is Not Only Impractical But Immoral.

An Individual Who Breaks A Law That Conscience Tells Him Is Unjust, And Who Willingly Accepts The Penalty Of Imprisonment In Order To Arouse The Conscience Of The Community Over Its Injustice, Is In Reality Expressing The Highest Respect For The Law.

We Have Also Come To This Hallowed Spot To Remind America Of The Fierce Urgency Of Now. This Is No Time To Engage In The Luxury Of Cooling Off Or To Take The Tranquilizing Drug Of Gradualism. Now Is The Time To Make Real The Promises Of Democracy

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

There Are More Negroes In Jail With Me Than There Are On The Voting Rolls.

One Of The Most Persistent Ambiguities That We Face Is That Everybody Talks About Peace As A Goal. However, It Does Not Take Sharpest-eyed Sophistication To Discern That While Everbody Talks About Peace, Peace Has Become Practically Nobody's Business Among The Power-wielders. Many Men Cry Peace! Peace! But They Refuse To Do The Things That Make For Peace.

Three Simple Words Can Describe The Nature Of The Social Revolution That Is Talking Place And What Negroes Really Want. They Are The Words "all," "now," And "here."

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

I Won't Have Any Money To Leave Behind. I Won't Have The Fine And Luxurious Things Of Life To Leave Behind. But I Just Want To Leave A Committed Life Behind.

Power At Its Best Is Love Implementing The Demand Of Justice.

A Lie Cannot Live.

You Know, My Friends, There Comes A Time When People Get Tired Of Being Trampled Over By The Iron Feet Of Oppression.

To Ignore Evil Is To Become An Accomplice To It.

Keep Feeling The Need For Being First. But I Want You To Be The First In Love. I Want You To Be The First In Moral Excellence. I Want You To Be The First In Generosity.

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

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.

Never Succumb To The Temptation Of Bitterness.

My Friends, I Must Say To You That We Have Not Made A Single Gain In Civil Rights Without Determined Legal And Nonviolent Pressure.

The Bombs In Vietnam Explode At Home; They Destroy The Hopes And Possibilities For A Decent America.

The Ultimate Weakness Of Violence Is That It Is A Descending Spiral, Begetting The Very Thing It Seeks To Destroy. Instead Of Diminishing Evil, It Multiplies It. Through Violence You May Murder The Liar, But You Cannot Murder The Lie, Nor Establish The Truth. Through Violence You May Murder The Hater, But You Do Not Murder Hate. In Fact, Violence Merely Increases Hate... Darkness Cannot Drive Out Darkness: Only Light Can Do That. Hate Cannot Drive Out Hate: Only Love Can Do That.

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.

Our Problem Is Not To Be Rid Of Fear But Rather To Harness And Master It.

Our Destiny Is Tied Up With The Destiny Of America.

For All Of Us Today, The Battle Is In Our Hands. The Road Ahead Is Not Altogether A Smooth One. There Are No Broad Highways To Lead Us Easily And Inevitably To Quick Solutions. We Must Keep Going.

I Must Face The Fact, As All Others In Positions Of Leadership Must Do, That America Today Is An Extremely Sick Nation, And That Something Could Well Happen To Me At Any Time. I Feel, Though, That My Cause Is So Right, So Moral, That If I Should Lose My Life, In Some Way It Would Aid The Cause.

Never Again Can We Afford To Live With The Narrow, Provincial "outside Agitator" Idea. Anyone Who Lives Inside The United States Can Never Be Considered An Outsider.

It Is Not Only Poverty That Torments The Negro; It Is The Fact Of Poverty Amid Plenty. It Is A Misery Generated By The Gulf Between The Affluence He Sees In The Mass Media And The Deprivation He Experiences In His Everyday Life.

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.

I Have Consistently Preached That Nonviolence Demands That The Means We Use Must Be As Pure As The Ends We Seek.

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.

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

Justice For All

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

An Individual Has Not Begun To Live Until He Can Rise Above The Narrow Horizons Of His Particular Individualistic Concerns To The Broader Concerns Of All Humanity. And This Is One Of The Big Problems Of Life, That So Many People Never Quite Get To The Point Of Rising Above Self. And So They End Up The Tragic Victims Of Self-centeredness. They End Up The Victims Of Distorted And Disrupted Personality.

The Time Is Always Right To Do What Is Right.

What Is More Tragic Than To See A Person Who Has Risen To The Disciplined Heights Of Tough-mindedness But Has At The Same Time Sunk To The Passionless Depths Of Hard-heartedness?

I Just Want To Be There In Love And In Justice And In Truth And In Commitment To Others, So That We Can Make Of This Old World A New World.

Change Does Not Roll In On The Wheels Of Inevitability, But Comes Through Continuous Struggle.

The Oppressed Must Never Allow The Conscience Of The Oppressor To Slumber. Religion Reminds Every Man That He Is His Brother's Keeper.

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. But We Assured That We'll Wear You Down By Our Capacity To Suffer, And One Day We Will Win Our Freedom. We Will Not Only Win Freedom For Ourselves, We Will So Appeal To Your Heart And Conscience That We Will Win You In The Process, And Our Victory Will Be A Double Victory.

Liberalism Provided Me With An Intellectual Satisfaction That I Never Found In Fundamentalism. I Became So Enamored Of The Insights Of Liberalism That I Almost Fell Into The Trap Of Accepting Uncritically Everything It Encompassed.

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.

We Must All Learn To Live Together As Brothers. Or We Will All Perish Together As Foolsfor Some Strange Reason 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.

If A Man Hasn't Discovered Something That He Will Die For, He Isn't Fit To Live.

Love Is Creative, Understanding Goodwill For All Men. It Is The Refusal To Defeat Any Individual.

O America, How You've Taken Necessities From The Masses To Give Luxuries To The Classes.

True Compassion Is More Than Flinging A Coin To A Beggar. It Comes To See That A System That Produces Beggars Needs To Be Repaved. We Are Called To Be The Good Samaritan, But After You Lift So Many People Out Of The Ditch You Start To Ask, Maybe The Whole Road To Jericho Needs To Be Repaved.

True Peace Is Not Merely The Absence Of Tension: It Is The Presence Of Justice.

Nonviolence Is Not Sterile Passivity, But A Powerful Moral Force Which Makes For Social Transformation.

Social Transformation

The Time Has Come For An All-out War Against Poverty. The Rich Nations Must Use Their Vast Resources Of Wealth To Develop The Underdeveloped, School The Unschooled, And Feed The Unfed. Ultimately A Great Nation Is A Compassionate Nation. No Individual Or Nation Can Be Great If It Does Not Have A Concern For "the Least Of These".

If Physical Death Is The Price That I Must Pay To Free My White Brothers And Sisters From A Permanent Death Of The Spirit, Then Nothing Can Be More Redemptive.

Be The Peace You Wish To See In The World!

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.

The Ultimate Measure Of A Man Is Not Where He Stands In Moments Of Comfort And Convenience, But Where He Stands At Times Of Challenge And Controversy.

The Ability To Lead A Happy Life Is Made, Not Found

Mind Your Own Business

It Is My Hope That As The Negro Plunges Deeper Into The Quest For Freedom And Justice He Will Plunge Even Deeper Into The Philosophy Of Non-violence. The Negro All Over The South Must Come To The Point That He Can Say To His White Brother: "we Will Match Your Capacity To Inflict Suffering With Our Capacity To Endure Suffering. We Will Meet Your Physical Force With Soul Force. We Will Not Hate You, But We Will Not Obey Your Evil Laws. We Will Soon Wear You Down By Pure Capacity To Suffer".

At Times, Life Is Hard, As Hard As Crucible Steel. It Has Its Bleak And Painful Moments. Like The Ever Flowing Water Of A River, Life Has Its Moments Of Drought And Its Moments Of Flood. Like The Ever-changin Cycle Of The Seasons, Life Has The Soothing Warmth Of The Summers And The Piercing Chill Of Its Winters. But Through It All, God Walks With Us. Never Forget That God Is Able To Lift You From The Fatigue Of Despair To The Buoyancy Of Hope, And Transform Dark And Desolate Valleys Into Sunlit Paths Of Inner Peace.

It's Not Burn Baby Burn, But Learn, Baby, Learn, So That You Can Earn, Baby, Earn.

The Hope Of The World Is Still In Dedicated Minorities. The Trail-blazers In Human, Scientific And Religious Freedom Have Always Been In A Minority.

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.

Success, Recognition, And Conformity Are The Bywords Of The Modern World Where Everyone Seems To Crave The Anesthetizing Security Of Being Identified With The Majority.

Be True To What You Said On Paper.

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.

The Reason I Can't Follow The Old Eye-for-an-eye Philosophy Is That It Ends Up Leaving Everyone Blind.

Hate Begets Hate; Violence Begets Violence; Toughness Begets A Greater Toughness. We Must Meet The Forces Of Hate With The Power Of Love.

Life's Piano Can Only Produce Melodies Of Brotherhood (and Sisterhood) When It Is Recognized That The Black Keys Are As Basic, Necessary And Beautiful As The White Keys.

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

Again And Again We Must Rise To The Majestic Heights Of Meeting Physical Force With Soul Force.

March On Washington

There Is Little Hope For Us Until We Become Tough-minded Enough To Break Loose From The Shackles Of Prejudice, Half-truths, And Downright Ignorance. The Shape Of The World Today Does Not Permit Us The Luxury Of Soft Mindedness. A Nation Or A Civilization That Continues To Produce Soft Minded Men Purchases Its Own Spiritual Death On An Installment Plan.

The More There Are Riots, The More Repressive Actin Will Take Place, And The More We Face The Danger Of A Right-wing Takeover And Eventually A Fascist Society.

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.

Only In The Darkness Can You See The Stars.

The Belief That God Will Do Everything For Man Is As Untenable As The Belief That Man Can Do Everything For Himself. It, Too, Is Based On A Lack Of Faith. We Must Learn That To Expect God To Do Everything While We Do Nothing Is Not Faith But Superstition.

I Also Came To See That Liberalism's Superficial Optimism Concerning Human Nature Caused It To Overlook The Fact That Reason Is Darkened By Sin. The More I Thought About Human Nature The More I Saw How Our Tragic Inclination For Sin Causes Us To Use Our Minds To Rationalize Our Actions. Liberalism Failed To See That Reason By Itself Is Little More Than An Instrument To Justify Man's Defensive Ways Of Thinking. Reason, Devoid Of The Purifying Power Of Faith, Can Never Free Itself From Distortions And Rationalizations.

World Hinges On Moral Foundations. God Has Made It So! God Has Made The Universe To Be Based On A Moral Law. So Long As Man Disobeys It He Is Revolting Against God. That’s What We Need In The World Today - People Who Will Stand For Right And Goodness.

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.

All Too Many Of Those Who Live In Affluent America Ignore Those Who Exist In Poor America; In Doing So, The Affluent Americans Will Eventually Have To Face Themselves With The Question That Eichman Chose To Ignore: How Responsible Am I For The Well-being Of My Fellows?

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

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.

We Decided To Set Our Direct-action Program Around The Easter Season, Realizing That, With Exception Of Christmas, This Was The Largest Shopping Period Of The Year. Knowing That A Strong Economic Withdrawal Program Would Be The By-product Of Direct Action.

On The One Hand We Are Called To Play The Good Samaritan On Life's Roadside; But That Will Be Only An Initial Act. One Day We Must Come To See That The Whole Jericho Road Must Be Transformed So That Men And Women Will Not Be Constantly Beaten And Robbed As They Make Their Journey On Life's Highway. True Compassion Is More Than Flinging A Coin To A Beggar; It Is Not Haphazard And Superficial. It Comes To See That An Edifice Which Produces Beggars Needs Restructuring. "a Time To Break Silence," At Riverside Church

A Third Reason Why We Should Love Our Enemies Is That Love Is The Only Force Capable Of Transforming An Enemy Into A Friend. We Never Get Rid Of An Enemy By Meeting Hate With Hate; We Get Rid Of An Enemy By Getting Rid Of Enmity. By Its Very Nature, Hate Destroys And Tears Down; By Its Very Nature, Love Creates And Builds Up. Love Transforms With Redemptive Power.

Nonviolent Action, The Negro Saw, Was The Way To Supplement, Not Replace, The Progress Of Change. It Was The Way To Divest Himself Of Passivity Without Arraying Himself In Vindictive Force.

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

Great People Aren't Those Who Are Happy At Times Of Convienience And Content, But Of How They Are In Times Of Catastrophy And Controversy.

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

There Are Some Things Concerning Which We Must Always Be Maladjusted If We Are To Be People Of Good Will. We Must Never Adjust Ourselves To Racial Segregation. We Must Never Adjust Ourselves To Religious Bigotry. We Must Never Adjust Ourselves To Economic Conditions That Take Necessities From The Many To Give Luxuries To The Few.

We Have Waited For More Than Three Hundred And Forty Years For Our Constitutional And God-given Rights.

For Years, I Labored With The Idea Of Reforming The Existing Institutions In The South, A Little Change Here, A Little Change There. Now I Feel Quite Differently. I Think You've Got To Have A Reconstruction Of The Entire System, A Revolution Of Values.

Knowledge Is A Process Of Piling Up Facts; Wisdom Lies In Their Simplification.

But While So Many White Americans Are Unaware Of Conditions Inside The Ghetto, There Are Very Few Ghetto Dwellers Who Are Unaware Of The Life Outside. The Television Sets Bombard Them Day By Day With The Opulence Of The Larger Society.

We Must Move Forward In The Days Ahead With Audacious Faith. The Moral Arc Of The Universe Is Long But It Bends Toward Justice.

By Opening Our Lives To God In Christ, We Become New Creatures. This Experience, Which Jesus Spoke Of As The New Birth, Is Essential If We Are To Be Transformed Nonconformists . . . Only Through An Inner Spiritual Transformation Do We Gain The Strength To Fight Vigorously The Evils Of The World In A Humble And Loving Spirit.

The Function Of Education Is To Teach One To Think Intensively And To Think Critically. Intelligence Plus Character - That Is The Goal Of True Education.

Look To A Day When People Will Not Be Judged By The Color Of Their Skin.

We Are Now Faced With The Fact That Tomorrow Is Today. We Are Confronted With The Fierce Urgency Of Now. In This Unfolding Conundrum Of Life And History, There "is" Such A Thing As Being Too Late. This Is No Time For Apathy Or Complacency. This Is A Time For Vigorous And Postive Action.

There's Something About Love That Builds Up And Is Creative. There Is Something About Hate That Tears Down And Is Destructive. So Love Your Enemies.

As Television Beamed The Image Of This Extraordinary Gathering Across The Border Oceans, Everyone Who Believed In Man's Capacity To Better Himself Had A Moment Of Inspiration And Confidence In The Future Of The Human Race.

Darkness Is Only Driven Out With Light, Not More Darkness.

Love Even For Enemies Is The Key To The Solution Of The Problems Of Our World.

Man Is Man Because He Is Free To Operate Within The Framework Of His Destiny. He Is Free To Deliberate, To Make Decisions, And To Choose Between Alternatives.

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.

Was Not Abraham Lincoln An Extremist? - "this Nation Cannot Survive Half Slave And Half Free."

In That Dramatic Scene On Calvary's Hill Three Men Were Crucified.... All Three Were Crucified For The Same Crime-the Crime Of Extremism. Two Were Extremists For Immorality, And Thus Fell Below Their Environment. The Other, Jesus Christ, Was An Extremist For Love, Truth And Goodness, And Thereby Rose Above His Environment. Perhaps The South, The Nation And The World Are In Dire Need Of Creative Extremists.

We Must Learn That To Expect God To Do Everything While We Do Nothing Is Not Faith But Superstition.

I Think That We Must Face The Fact That In Reality, You Cannot Have Economic And Political Equality Without Having Some Form Of Social Equality. I Think This Is Inevitable.

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