“Ik raakte ervan overtuigd dat niet meewerken aan een slechte zaak net zo goed een morele verplichting inhoudt als meewerken aan iets goeds.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“The limitation of riots, moral questions aside, is that they cannot win and their participants know it. Hence, rioting is not revolutionary but reactionary because it invites defeat. It involves an emotional catharsis, but it must be followed by a sense of futility.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“If you have not discovered something you are willing to die for, then you are not fit to live.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“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. Science keeps religion from sinking into the valley of crippling irrationalism and paralysing obscurantism. Religion prevents science from falling into the marsh of obsolete materialism and moral nihilism.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“Japan knows the horror of war and has suffered as no other nation under the cloud of nuclear disaster. Certainly Japan can stand strong for a world of peace.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“Please be peaceful. We believe in law and order. We are not advocating violence, I want you to love your enemies... for what we are doing is right, what we are doing is just -- and God is with us.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“The nonviolent approach does not immediately change the heart of the oppressor. It first does something to the hearts and souls of those committed to it. It gives them new self-respect; it calls up resources of strength and courage they did not know they had.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and nonviolence, when it helps us to see the enemy's point of view, to hear his questions, to know his assessment of ourselves. For from his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a desert state sweltering in the heat of injustice and oppression, will one day be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“Even where the polls are open to all, Negroes have shown themselves too slow to exercise their voting privileges. There must be a concerted effort on the part of Negro leaders to arouse their people from their apathetic indifference to this obligation of citizenship. In the past, apathy was a moral failure. Today, it is a form of moral and political suicide.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
