“We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools”

“I became convinced that noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good.”

“After the riot in Chicago that Summer, I was greatly discouraged. But we had trained a group of about two thousand disciplined devotees of nonviolence who were willing to take blows without retaliation. We started out engaging in constitutional privileges, marching before real estate offices in all-white communities. And that nonviolent , disciplined, determined force created such a crisis in the city of Chicago that the city had to do something to change conditions. We didn’t have any Molotov cocktails, we didn’t have any bricks, we didn’t have guns, we just had the power of our bodies and our souls. There was power there, and it was demonstrated once more.”

“Modern psychology has a word that is probably used more than any other word in modern psychology. It is the word “maladjusted.” This word is the ringing cry to modern child psychology. Certainly, we all want to avoid the maladjusted life. In order to have real adjustment within our personalities, we all want the well‐adjusted life in order to avoid neurosis, schizophrenic personalities. But I say to you, my friends, as I move to my conclusion, 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. I say very honestly that I never intend to become adjusted to segregation and discrimination. I never intend to become adjusted to religious bigotry. I never intend to adjust myself to economic conditions that will take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few. I never intend to adjust myself to the madness of militarism, to self‐defeating effects of physical violence… In other words, I’m about convinced now that there is need for a new organization in our world. The International Association for the Advancement of Creative Maladjustment‐‐men and women who will be as maladjusted as the prophet Amos. Who in the midst of the injustices of his day could cry out in words that echo across the centuries, “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that.”

“Violence is not only impractical but immoral.”

“Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.”

“They have acted in the faith that right defeated is stronger than evil triumphant.”

“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., civil rights leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner”

“When you are right, you cannot be too radical; When you are wrong, you cannot be too conservative.”

“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.”

“God is able to give you the power to endure that which cannot be changed... Why be anxious? Come what may, God is able.”

“Amen to that.”

“An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.”

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”