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The first question which the priest
and the Levite asked [on the Jericho Road] was: ‘If I
stop to help this man, what will happen to me?' But...the
good Samaritan reversed the question: ‘If I do not stop
to help this man, what will happen to him?'
"Through violence
you may murder a murderer, but you can't murder murder.
Through violence you may murder a liar, but you can't establish
truth.
Through violence you may murder a hater, but you can't murder
hate.
Darkness cannot put out darkness. Only light can do that….
Difficult and painful as it is, we must walk on in the days
ahead with an audacious faith in the future. 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."
Martin Luther King,
"Where do we go from here?", August 1967
I'd like someone to mention the day that
Martin Luther King tried to give his life serving others.
I'd like somebody to say that day, that Martin Luther King
tried to love somebody. I want you to say that day, that I
tried to be right on the war question. I want you to be able
to say that day, that I did try to feed the hungry . . . I
want you to say that I tried to love and serve humanity. Yes,
if you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was
a drum major for justice; say that I was a drum major for
peace; I was a drum major for righteousness . . . I want to
leave a committed life behind.
The ultimate measure of a person is not
where one stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but
where one stands in times of challenge and controversy.
The means by which we live have outdistanced
the ends for which we live. Our scientific power has outrun
our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided
men.
I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional
love will have the final word in reality. That is why right,
temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.
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.
Injustice anywhere
is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable
network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.
Peace is not merely
a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive
at that goal.
One day we shall
win freedom, but not only for ourselves. We shall so appeal
to your heart and conscience that we shall win you in the
process, and our victory will be a double victory.
If you succumb to
the temptation of using violence in the struggle, unborn generations
will be the recipients of a long and desolate night of bitterness,
and your chief legacy to the future will be an endless reign
of meaningless chaos.
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.
"As you press on for justice, be sure
to move with dignity and discipline, using only the weapon
of love. Let no man pull you so low as to hate him.
Always avoid violence. If you succumb to the temptation of
using violence in your struggle, unborn generations will be
the recipients of a long and desolate night of bitterness,
and your chief legacy to the future will be an endless reign
of meaningless chaos."
A man who won't die for something is not fit to live.
There is nothing more dangerous than
to build a society, with a large segment of people in that society,
who feel that they have no stake in it; who feel that they have
nothing to lose. People who have a stake in their society, protect
that society, but when they don't have it, they unconsciously
want to destroy it.
If a man is called to be a streetsweeper,
he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven
composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep
streets so well that all the host of heaven and earth will pause
to say, here lived a great streetsweeper who did his job well.
I refuse to accept the view that mankind
is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and
war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never
become reality. I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional
love will have the final word.
Violence as a way of achieving racial
justice is both impractical and immoral. It is impractical
because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for
all. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent
rather than win his understanding; it seeks to annihilate
rather than to convert. Violence is immoral because it thrives
on hatred rather than love.
"A time comes when silence in betrayal.
Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not
easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy,
especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move
without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist
thought within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world....
"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. For we are deeply in need of a new way
beyond the darkness that seems so close around us....
"We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence
or violent coannihilation. We must move past indecision to
action. 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.
"Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves in
the long and bitter, but beautiful struggle for a new world...."
April 4, 1967 in Riverside Church
in New York City
"It cannot be disputed that full
scale Nuclear war would be utterly catastrophic. Hundreds
of millions of people would be killed outright by the blast
and heat and by the ionizing radiation produced at the instant
of the explosion. All of this leads me to say that the principal
objective of all nations must be the total abolition of war,
and a definite move toward disarmament. War must be finally
eliminated or the whole of mankind will be plunged into the
abyss of annihilation."
"We will not build a peaceful
world by following a negative path. It is not enough to say
we must not wage war. It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice
for it. We must concentrate not merely on the negative expulsion
of war but the postive affirmation of peace. We must see that
peace represents a sweeter music, a cosmic melody, that is
far superior to the dischords of war. Somehow, we must transform
the dynamics of the world power struggle from the negative
nuclear arms race, which no one can win, to a positive contest
to harness humanity's creative genius for the purpose of making
peace and prosperity a reality for all the nations of the
world. In short, we must shift the arms race into a peace
race. If we have a will- and determination- to mount such
a peace offensive, we will unlock hitherto tightly sealed
doors of hope and transform our imminent cosmic elegy into
a psalm of creative fulfillment."
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