“The more I thought about human nature, the more I saw how our tragic inclination for sin/mistakes causes us to use our minds to rationalize our action.”
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Martin Luther King Jr
“We can all get more together than we can apart. And this is the way we gain power. Power is the ability to achieve purpose, power is the ability to effect change, and we need power.”
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Martin Luther King Jr
“We must combine the toughness of the serpent and the softness of the dove, a tough mind and a tender heart.”
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Martin Luther King Jr
“If the inexpressible cruelties of slavery could not stop us, the opposition we now face will surely fail. We will win our freedom because the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of God are embodied in our echoing demands.”
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Martin Luther King Jr
“True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. ”
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Martin Luther King Jr
“Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.”
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Martin Luther King Jr
“The greatness of our God lies in the fact that [He] is both tough minded and tender hearted. ... [God] expresses [His] tough mindedness in [His] justice and wrath and [His] tenderheartedness in [His] love and grace. ... On the one hand, God is a God of justice who punished Israel for her wayward deeds, and on the other hand, [He] is a forgiving father whose heart was filled with unutterable joy when the prodigal son returned home.”
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Martin Luther King Jr
“The absence of brutality and unregenerate evil is not the presence of justice. To stay murder is not the same thing as to ordain brotherhood.”
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Martin Luther King Jr
“The question was not whether one should use his gun when his home was attacked, but whether it was tactically wise to use a gun while participating in an organized demonstration. If they lowered the banner of nonviolence, I said, Mississippi injustice would not be exposed and the moral issues would be obscured.”
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Martin Luther King Jr
“So often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an archdefender of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church’s silent—and often even vocal—sanction of things as they are. But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If today’s church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century. Every day I meet young people whose disappointment with the church has turned into outright disgust.”
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Martin Luther King Jr
“The accusation is made without reference to the true nature of the situation. Environmental problems of delinquency are interpreted as evidence of racial criminality. Crises arising in Northern schools are interpreted as proofs that Negroes are inherently delinquent. The extremists do not recognize that these school problems are symptoms of urban dislocation, rather than expressions of racial deficiency. Criminality and delinquency are not racial; poverty and ignorance breed crime whatever the racial group may be.”
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Martin Luther King Jr
“Violence brings only temporary victories; violence, by creating many more social problems than it solves, never brings permanent peace.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
