“Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“Ten thousand fools proclaim themselves into obscurity, while one wise man forgets himself into immortality.”
―
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
“They have acted in the faith that right defeated is stronger than evil triumphant.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“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.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“But I am also concerned about our moral uprightness and the health of our souls. Therefore I must oppose any attempt to gain our freedom by the methods of malice, hate, and violence that have characterized our oppressors. Hate is just as injurious to the hater as it is to the hated. Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Many of our inner conflicts are rooted in hate. This is why psychiatrists say, “Love or perish.” Hate is too great a burden to bear.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on the installment plan.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars... Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and think critically. Intelligence plus character; that is the goal of a true education.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr