Martin Luther King Jr.

1."Suffering, the nonviolent resister realizes, has tremendous educational and transforming possibilities," King wrote, quoting Gandhi that "Things of fundamental importance to people are not secured by reason alone, but have to be purchased with their suffering. Suffering is infinitely more powerful than the law of the jungle for converting the opponent and opening his ears which are otherwise shut to the voice of reason."
2."…the great stumbling block …[is the] moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to the positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises... to wait for a "more convenient season".
3.… millions of poor…Americans are in economic bondage that is scarcely less oppressive [without life, liberty nor the privilege of pursuing happiness].
4.…in the final analysis the end is preexistent in the means.
5.History is ultimately guided by spirit, not matter.
6.It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it.
7.It is still one of the tragedies of human history that the 'children of darkness' are frequently more determined and zealous than the 'children of light'.
8.On the one hand I must attempt to change the soul of individuals so that their societies may be changed. On the other I must attempt to change the societies so that the individual soul will have a change. Therefore, I must be concerned about unemployment, slums, and economic insecurity.
9.The Christian ought always to be challenged by any protest against unfair treatment of the poor.
10.Where evil men would seek to perpetuate an unjust status quo, good men must seek to bring into being a real order of justice.
11....the worst disservice that we as individuals or churches can do to Christianity is to become sponsors and supporters of the status quo.
12.I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be… We are interdependent.
13.In the final analysis, the ['Have's'] cannot ignore the problem of the ['Have nots'], because he is part of the ['Have nots'] and the ['Have not'] is part of him. The ['Have not's'] agony diminishes the ['Have'], and the ['Have not's] salvation enlarges the ['Have'].
14.We… are entitled to the basic rights and opportunities of … citizens: The right to earn a living at work for which we are fitted by training and ability; equal opportunities in education; health, recreation, and similar public services; the right to vote; equality before the law; some of the same courtesy and good manners that we ourselves bring to all human relations.
15.The only solution to breaking down the infamous wall of segregation in Chicago rested in our being able to mobilize both the white and black communities into a massive nonviolent movement, which would stop at nothing short of changing the ugly face of the black ghetto into a community of love and justice.
16.Life's most persistent and urgent question is, What are you doing for others.
17.Many men cry Peace! Peace! But they refuse to do the things that make for peace.
18.True peace is … the presence of justice.
19.A man who won't die for something is not fit to live.
20.Any religion that professes to be concerned with the souls of men and is not concerned with the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strangle them, and the social conditions that cripple them is a dry-as-dust religion. Such a religion is the kind the Marxists like to see - an opiate of the people.
21.How responsible am I for the well-being of my fellows? To ignore evil is to become an accomplice to it.
22.The broad education will, therefore, transmit to one not only the accumulated knowledge of the race but also the accumulated experience of social living.
23.… changing the ugly face of the ghetto… meant removing future generations from dilapidated tenements, opening the doors of job oportunities to all regardless fo their color, and making the resources of all social institutions available for their uplifting into the mainstream of American life.
24.Justice so long deferred has accumulated interest and its cost for this society will be substantial in financial as well as human terms.
25.Somehow we must transform the dynamics of the world… to a creative conquest to harness man's genius for the purpose of making peace and prosperity a reality for all nations of the world.
26.I would minimize the racial significance and point to the fact that these were the rumblings of discontent from the "have nots" within the midst of an affluent society.
27.The northern ghetto had become a type of colonial area. The colony was powerless because all important decisions affecting the community were made from the outside. Many of its inhabitants even had their daily lives dominated by the welfare worker and the policeman. The profits of landlord and merchant were removed and seldom if ever reinvested. The only positive thing the larger society saw in the slum was that it was a source of cheap surplus labor in times of economic boom. Otherwise, its inhabitants were blamed for their own victimization.
28.This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy, now is the time to open the doors of opportunity to all of God's children. Now is the time to end the long and desolate night of slumism. Now is the time to have a confrontation between the forces resisting change and the forces demanding change. Now is the time to let justice roll down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.
29.By acts of commission and omission none of us in this great country has done enough to remove injustice. I therefore humbly suggest that all of us accept our share of responsibility for these past days of anguish [in Watts].
30.Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism and militarism.
31."I know where we can store that food free of charge - in wrinkled stomachs of the millions of people who go to bed hungry at night." Maybe we spend too much of our national budget building military bases around the world rather than bases of genuine concern and understanding. (Lincoln U., 1961)
32."I'm walking for my children and my grandchildren." and she continued toward home on foot.
33."Keep Martin Luther King in the background and God in the foreground and everything will be all right."
34."You must not harbor anger," I admonished myself. "You must be willing to suffer the anger of the opponent, and yet not return anger. You must not become bitter. No matter how emotional your opponents are, you must be calm."
35.[The believer in nonviolence] lives by the conviction that through his suffering and cross bearing, the social situation may be redeemed.
36.[The children of the 'have nots'] are maimed a little every day of our lives.
37.[The demonstration] represented a demand for respect.
38.[The nonviolent movement] seeks justice and reconciliation - not victory.
39.[They] had acquired a new sense of sombodiness and self-respect, and had a new determination to achieve freedom and human dignity no matter what the cost.
40.[They] had to be prepared to suffer, sacrifice, and even die to gain their goals.
41.[Violence] destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible.
42.[Violence] ends by defeating itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers.
43.… a new determination to struggle and sacrifice until first-class citizenship becomes a reality.
44.… although your white fellow citizens would insist that they were Christians, they practiced segregation as rigidly in the house of God as they did in the theater.
45.… but it is another thing… to conquer [the enemy's] hate….
46.… good men must plan… build and bind… commit themselves to the glories of love… seek to bring into being a real order of justice.
47.… groups tend to be more immoral than individuals.
48.… I had no fears now and consequently had no need of protection.
49.… right temporarily defeated is stronger than evil triumphant.
50.… the arc of the moral universe, although long, is bending toward justice.




51.… the city officials appeared so hardened to all appeals to conscience that the confidence of some of our supporters was shaken.
52.… the means represent the seed and the end represents the tree.
53.… the surging sense of strength of people who had dared to defy tyrant, and had discovered that tyrants could be defeated.
54.… the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks to dramatize the issue so that it can no longer be ignored.
55.… they injected a new meaning into the veins of history and of civilization."
56.… we firmly believe that our [land] will never reach its full potential and moral maturity until this cancerous disease is removed.
57.… we possessed the most formidable weapon of all - the conviction that we were right.
58.… we will so appeal to your heart and conscience that we will win you in the process….
59.… we'll wear you down by our capacity to suffer….
60.…a movement that would stagger and astound the imagination of the oppressor….
61.…capitalism is always in danger of inspiring men to be more concerned about making a living than making a life.
62.…I do remember moments that I have been carried out of myself by something greater than myself and to that something I have myself. Has this great something been God?
63.…learned to fight for their rights with the weapon of love, and who, in the process, acquired a new estimate of their own human worth.
64.…let us be loving enough to turn an enemy into a friend.
65.…some of the most valuable foot soldiers were youngsters ranging from elementary pupils to teenage high school and college students.
66.…the idea of a personal God… gave me a metaphysical basis for the dignity and worth of all human beings.
67.…what we were really doing was withdrawing our cooperation from and evil system, rather than merely withdrawing our support from the bus company.
68.A man can't ride your back unless it's bent.
69.A once fear ridden people had been transformed.
70.Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its explore creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.
71.Again Jeremiah is a shining example of the truth that religion should never sanction the status quo. This more than anything else should be inculcated into the minds of modern religionists, for the worst disservice that we as individuals or churches can do to Christianity is to become sponsors and supporters of the status quo.
72.Albany city officials were quick to recognize that the watching and concerned millions across the nation would sense the moral righteousness of our conduct.
73.Along the way of life, someone must have sense enough and morality enough to cut off the chain of hate and evil. The greatest way to do that is through love.
74.An important part of the mass meetings was the freedom songs. In a sense the freedom songs are the soul of the movement.
75.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.
76.And the guardians of the status-quo are always on hand with their oxygen tents to keep the old order alive. But if democracy is to live, segregation must die.
77.Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.
78.As a young man with most of my life ahead of me, I decided early to give my life to something eternal and absolute. Not to these little gods that are here today and gone tomorrow. But to God who is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
79.As I watched I knew that there is nothing more majestic than the determined courage of individuals willing to suffer and sacrifice for their freedom and dignity.
80.But in the darkness I could see the radiant star of unity.
81.Compassion and nonviolence help us to see the enemy's point of view….
82.Courage faces fear and thereby masters it.
83.Education which stops with efficiency may prove the greatest menace to society. The most dangerous criminal may be the man gifted with reason but with no morals.
84.Every man lives in to realms, the internal and the external. The internal is that realm of spiritual ends expressed in art, literature, morals, and religion. The external is that complex of devices, techniques, mechanisms, and instrumentalities by means of which we live. Our problem today is that we have allowed the internal to become lost in the external. We have allowed the means by which we live to outdistance the ends for which we live.
85.Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or the darkness of destructive selfishness.
86.Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.
87.For us the first stage of victory required [that we] break the barrier of silence and paralysis which for decades suppressed them and denied them the simplest of improvements. This victory was achieved when nonviolent protest aroused every element of the community....
88.Freedom has always been an expensive thing. History is fit testimony to the fact that freedom is rarely gained without sacrifice and self-denial.
89.Freedom is never given to anybody. Privileged classes never give up their privileges without strong resistance.
90.Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.
91.Gandhi had an amazing capacity for self-criticism.
92.Gandhi was able to galvanize more people in his lifetime than any other person in the history of this world.
93.Gandhi was probably the first person in history to lift the love ethic of Jesus above mere interaction between individuals to a powerful and effective social force on a large scale.
94.Hatred and bitterness can never cure the disease of fear; only love can do that.
95.Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it.
96.Hatred darkens life; love illumines it.
97.Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it.
98.He always realized that the [system] was mad for domination and exploitation. It was made to keep a certain group down and exploit that group economically for the advantage of another.
99.How we deal with this crucial situation will determine our moral health as individuals, our cultural health as a region, our political health as a nation, and our prestige as a leader of the free world.




100.I am convinced now, as I was then, that man is an end because he is a child of god.
101.I am often reminded of the statement made by Nkrumah: "I prefer self-government with danger to servitude with tranquility."
102.I believe firmly that love is a transforming power that can lift a whole community to new horizons of fair play, goodwill and justice.
103.I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality.
104.I believe that what self-centered men have torn down, other-centered men can build up.
105.I came face to face with the question of death and I dealt with it. From that point on, I no longer needed a gun nor have I been afraid.
106.I came to see that no one gives up his privileges without strong resistance.
107.I had hoped that the … moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of progress.
108.I have always felt that ultimately along the way of life an individual must stand up and be counted and be willing to face the consequences whatever they are. And if he is filled with fear he cannot do it. My great prayer is always for God to save me from the paralysis of crippling fear, because I think when a person lives with the fears of the consequences for his personal life he can never do anything in terms of lifting the whole of humanity and solving many of the social problems which we confront in every age and every generation.
109.I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth… we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood.
110.I have tried to be honest. To be honest is to confront the truth.
111.I learned that truth and conviction in the hands of a skillful advocate could make what started out as a bigoted, prejudiced jury, choose the path of justice.
112.I rejoined the ranks of those working ceaselessly for the realization of the ideals of freedom and justice for all men.
113.I remember saying in that letter that so often I have been disappointed because we have not received the cooperation of the Church. I remember saying that so often the Church in our struggle had been a taillight, rather than a headlight. The Church had so often been an echo, rather than a voice.
114.I said to myself, no matter what these men had done, they shouldn't be treated like this.
115.I soon saw that I was the victim of an unwarranted pessimism because I had started out with an unwarranted optimism.
116.I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.
117.I want you to know that if M.L.King had never been born this movement would have taken place. I just happened to be here. You know there comes a time when time itself is ready for change. That time has come to Montgomery, and I had nothing to do with it.
118.I was once more on the verge of corroding hatred. And once more I caught myself and said: "You must not allow yourself to become bitter."
119.I was weighted down by a terrible sense of guilt, remembering that on two or three occasions I had allowed myself to become angry and indignant… yet I knew that this was no way to solve a problem.
120.If I demonstrated unusual calm during the recent attempt on my life, it was certainly not due to any extraordinary powers that I posses. Rather, it was due to the power of God working through me.
121.If our actions in any way served to bring this issue to the forefront of the conscience of the community, they were not undertaken in vain.
122.If the casualties of principle are not healed, the physical casualties will continue to mount.
123.If we are to go forward, we must go back and rediscover these precious values - that all reality hinges on moral foundations and that all reality has spiritual control.
124.If we are wrong, God almighty is wrong. If we are wrong, Jesus of Nazareth was merely a utopian dreamer….
125.In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist; negotiation; self-purification; and direct action.
126.In no sense do I advocate evading or defying the law… That would lead to anarchy. One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty.
127.In short, our movement had taken the moral offensive, enriching our people with a spirit of strength to fight for equality and freedom even if the struggle is to be long and arduous.
128.Inferior education, poor housing, unemployment, inadequate health care - each is a bitter component of the oppression that has been our heritage. Each will require billions of dollars to correct.
129.Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea. Anyone who lives ... can never be considered an outsider anywhere....
130.Intelligence plus character - that is the goal of true education.
131.Isn't love too ineffable to be grasped by the cold calculating hands of intellect?
132.It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence in this world, it's nonviolence or nonexistence.
133.It is not the ['group'] per se that we fight but the policies and ideology that leaders of that ['group'] have formulated to perpetuate oppression.
134.It seemed as though I could hear the quiet assurance of an inner voice saying: "Martin Luther, stand up for righteousness. Stand up for justice. Stand up for truth. And lo, I will be with you. Even until the end of the world."
135.It was a crime to seek to instill within my people a sense of dignity and self-respect. It was a crime of desiring for my people the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It was above all the crime of seeking to convince my people that noncooperation with evil is just as much a moral duty as is cooperation with good.
136.It was Jesus of Nazareth that stirred the Negroes to protest with the creative weapon of love.
137.It was my hope that we would remove from our souls the shackles of fear and the manacles of despair, and move on into the uncertain but promising future with the faith that the dawn of a new day was just around the horizon.
138.It's just impossible to carry out the responsibilities of a father and husband when you have these kinds of demands.
139.I've seen too much hate to want to hate myself… hate is too great a burden to bear.
140.Justice and equality, I saw, would never come while segregation remained, because the basic purpose of segregation was to perpetuate injustice and inequality.
141.Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality.
142.Love is the most durable power in the world. This creative force, so beautifully exemplified in the life of our Christ, is the most potent instrument available in mankind's quest for peace and security.
143.Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend.
144.Man is not made for the state; the state is made for man.
145.Man must never be treated as a means to the end of the state, but always as an end within himself.
146.Mass civil disobedience… is a device of social action that is more difficult for the government to quell by superior force.
147.Maybe it will take this type of self-suffering on the part of numerous [people] to finally expose the moral defense of our … brothers who happen to be misguided and thusly awaken the dozing conscience of our community.
148.My personal reason for being in Albany was to express a personal witness of a situation I felt was very important to me.
149.Nature is God's tongue.
150.No one can understand my conflict who has not looked into the eyes of those he loves, knowing that he has no alternative but to take a dangerous stand that leaves them tormented.



151.Nonviolence is ultimately a way of life that men live by because of the sheer morality of its claim.
152.Nonviolence… reaches the opponent and so stirs his conscience that reconciliation becomes a reality.
153.Nonviolent resistance had emerged as the technique of the movement, while love stood as the regulating ideal.
154.One of the great problems of mankind is that we suffer from a poverty of the spirit which stands in glaring contrast to our scientific and technological abundance.
155.Our concern would not be to put the bus company out of business, but to put justice in business.
156.Paul Tillich has said that sin is separation. Is not segregation an existential expression of man's tragic separation, his awful estrangement, his terrible sinfulness?
157.Sacrifice personal wishes in order that all men might be free.
158.Seek to perform regular service for others and for the world.
159.Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.
160.So in a quiet and dignified manner, we decided to substitute tired feet for tired souls, and walk the streets of Montgomery until the sagging walls of injustice had been crushed by the battering rams of surging justice.
161.So today capitalism has out-lived its usefulness. It has brought about a system that takes necessities from the masses to give luxuries to the classes.
162.That creative minority of whites absolutely committed to civil rights can make it clear to the larger society that [injustice] can no longer be tolerated. It will take such a small committed minority to work unrelentingly to win the uncommitted majority.
163.The comfortable, the entrenched, the privileged cannot continue to tremble at the prospect of change in the status quo.
164.The complete education gives one not only power of concentration but worthy objectives upon which to concentrate.
165.The function of education… is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically.
166.The Kingdom of God is neither the thesis of individual enterprise nor the antithesis of collective enterprise, but a synthesis which reconciles the truths of both.
167.The lack of restraint upon violence in our society along with the defiance of law by men in high places cannot but result in an atmosphere which engenders desperate deeds.
168.The Length of Life… is the inward concern for one's personal welfare. The Breadth of Life is the outward concern for the welfare of others. The Height of Life is the upward reach toward God. These are the three dimensions of life, and without the due development of all, no life becomes complete.
169.The nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.
170.The Negroes' "Now" was becoming as militant as the segregationists' "Never".
171.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.
172.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 that they did not know they had. Finally it reaches the opponent and so stirs his conscience that reconciliation becomes a reality.
173.The nonviolent resistance of the early Christians had constituted a moral offensive of such overriding power that it shook the Roman Empire.
174.The overall purpose of this pilgrimage was to arouse the conscience of the nation and favor of racial justice.
175.The prevailing theme was that " we must not take this as a victory over the white man, but as a victory for justice and democracy."
176.The recording of the law in itself is treated as the reality of reform.
177.The richer we have become materially, the poorer we have become morally and spiritually.
178.The social tool of nonviolent resistance… was effective in that it had a way of disarming the opponent. It exposed his moral defenses. It weakened his morale, and at the same time it worked on his conscience. It also provided a method for [people] to struggle to secure moral ends through moral means. Thus, I provided a creative force through which men could channel their discontent.
179.The spirit of self-sacrifice and commitment remained firm, and [they] found themselves dealing with students who had lost the fear of jail and physical injury.
180.The thing that we need in the world today, is a group of men and women who will stand up for right and be opposed to wrong, wherever it is. A group of people who have come to see that some things are wrong, whether they're never caught up with. Some things are right, whether nobody sees you doing them or not.
181.The trailblazers in human, academic, scientific, and religious freedom have always been in the minority.
182.The ultimate tragedy of Birmingham was not the brutality of the bad people, but the silence of the good people.
183.The way of nonviolence leads to redemption and the creation of the beloved community.
184.The world doesn't like people like Gandhi. That's strange, isn't it? They don't like people like Christ; they don't like people like Lincoln. They killed him - this man who had done all of that…. He was a man of love….
185.There is amazing power in unity. Where there is true unity, every effort to disunite only serves to strengthen the unity.
186.There is never a time in our American democracy that we must ever think we're wrong when we protest. We reserve that right.
187.There is so much frustration in the world because we have relied on gods rather than God… the god of science… the god of pleasure… the god of money…. These transitory gods are not able to save or bring happiness to the human heart.
188.These men so often have a high blood pressure of words and an anemia of deeds.
189.They believe that American society is essentially hospitable to fair play and to steady growth toward a middle-class Utopia embodying … harmony. But unfortunately this is a fantasy of self-deception and comfortable vanity.
190.This constant prayer life and feeling of dependence on God have given me the feeling that I have divine companionship in the struggle. I know no other way to explain it. It is the fact that in the midst of external tension, God can give an inner peace.
191.This is no day to pay lip service to integration, we must pay LIFE service to it.
192.Through education we seek to break down the spiritual values….
193.To deprive man of freedom is to relegate him to the status of a thing, rather than elevate him to the status of a person.
194.To save man from the morass of propaganda, in my opinion, is one of the chief aims of education.
195.Too long has our beloved [land] been bogged down in a tragic effort to live in monologue rather than dialogue.
196.True nonviolent resistance is… a courageous confrontation of evil by the power of love, in the faith that it is better to be the recipient of violence than the inflicter of it, since the latter only multiplies the existence of violence and bitterness in the universe, while the former may develop a sense of shame in the opponent, and thereby bring about a transformation and change of heart.
197.Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love.
198.Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love. It destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible. It leaves society in monologue rather than dialogue. Violence ends in defeating itself.
199.We are prone to judge success by the index of our salaries or the size of our automobiles, rather than by the quality of our service and relationship to humanity.




200.We believe in a system of law based on justice and morality.
201.We concluded that in hard-core communities, a more effective battle could be waged if it was concentrated against one aspect of the evil and intricate system….
202.We did not hesitate to call our movement an army. It was a special army, with no supplies but its sincerity, no uniform but its determination, no arsenal except its faith, no currency but its conscience. It was an army that would move but not maul. It was an army that would sing but not slay.
203.We do not seek to remove this unjust system for ourselves alone but for our white brothers as well.
204.We had a moral obligation to remind him that [it] was wrong.
205.We had the protection of our knowledge that we were more concerned about realizing our righteous aims than about saving our skins.
206.We have allowed the means by which we live to outdistance the ends for which we live.
207.We made it clear that we would not send anyone out to demonstrate who had not convinced himself and us that he could accept and endure violence without retaliating.
208.We must give men and women, who are all but on the brink of despair, a new bent on life.
209.We must learn that to expect God to do everything while we do nothing is not faith but superstition.
210.We must never forget that such a noble organization as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was organized by whites….
211.We must work passionately and indefatigably to bridge the gulf between our scientific progress and our moral progress. One of the great problems of mankind is that we suffer from a poverty of the spirit which islands in glaring contrast to our scientific and technological abundance. The richer we have become materially, the poorer we have become morally and spiritually.
212.We must work unceasingly to lift this nation that we love to a higher destiny, to a new plateau of compassion, to a more noble expression of humanness.
213.We seek an integration based upon mutual respect.
214.We want to love our enemies. I want you to love our enemies. Be good to them. Love them and let them know you love them.
215.When an individual is no longer a true participant, when he no longer feels a sense of responsibility to his society, the content of democracy is emptied.
216.When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality.
217.When millions of people have been cheated for centuries, restitution is a costly process.
218.Whenever the church, consciously or unconsciously, caters to one class it loses the spiritual force of the "whosoever will, let him come" doctrine, and is in danger of becoming little more than a social club with a thin veneer of religiosity.
219.With nonviolent resistance, no individual or group need submit to any wrong….
220.Without persistent effort, time itself becomes an ally of the insurgent and primitive forces of irrational emotionalism and social destruction.
221.You need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.
222.You see, equality is not only a matter of mathematics and geometry, but it's a matter of psychology. It's not only a quantitative something but it is a qualitative something; and it is possible to have quantitative equality and qualitative inequality.
223.It has taken Christianity almost two thousand years to accomplish what it has. The teachings of Christ take time to come to earth.
224.More and more I feel that people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will.
225.We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people.
226.Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co-workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation.
227.We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right.
228.Now is the time to lift our national policy… to the solid rock of human dignity.
229.One is a force of complacency, made up in part of negroes who, as a result of long years of oppression, are so drained of self-respect and a sense of "somebodiness" that they have adjusted to segregation; and in part of a few maddle-class Negroes who, because of a degree of academic and economic security and because in some ways they profit by segregation, have becdome insensitive to the problems of the masses.
230.…there is the more excellent way of love and nonviolent protest.
231.Something within has reminded him of his birthright of freedom, and something without has reminded him that it can be gained.
232.If his repressed emotions are not released in nonviolent ways, they will seek expression through violence; this is not a threat but a fact of history.
233.Was Jesus not an extremist for love: "Love your enemies, b less them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you."
234.… The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate of for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice of for the externsion of justice?
235.In that dramatic scene on Calvary's hill three men were crucified. We must never forget that all three were crucified for the same crime - the crime of extremism. Two were extremists for immorality, and thus fell below their environment. The other, Jesus Christ, was an extremist for love, truth, and goodness, and thereby rose above his environment. Perhaps... the nation, and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.
236.I suppose I should have realized that few members of the oppressor race can understand the deep groans and passionate yearnings of the oppressed race, and still fewer have the vision to see that injustice must be rooted out by strong, persistent, and determined action.
237.I have heard many ministers say: "Those are social issues, with which the gospel has no real concern." And I have watched many churches commit themselves to a completely otherworldly religion which makes a strange, un-Biblical distinction between body and soul, between the sacred and the secular.
238.In deep disappointment I have wept over the saxity of the Church. But be assured that my tears have been tears of love. There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love. Yes, I love the Church… But, oh! How we have blemished and scarred that body through social neglect and through fear of being nonconformists.
239.There was a time when the Church was very powerful - in the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society.
240. Whenever the early Christians entered a town, the people in power became disturbed and immediately sought to convict the Christians for being "disturbers of the peace" and "outside agitators." But the early Christians pressed on, in the conviction that they were "a colony of heaven," called to obey God rather than man. Small in number, they were big in commitment. They were too God-intoxicated to be "astronomically intimidated." By their effort and example they brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contests.
241.So often [today] the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an arch-defender of the status quo. Far from being distrubed by the presence of the Church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the Churche's silent - and often evern vocal - sanction of things as they are.
242.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 twentiety century. Every day I meet young people whose disappointment with the Church has turned into outright disgust.
243.Every day I meet young people whose disappointment with the Church has turned into outright disgust.
244.Perhaps I have once again been too optimistic. Is organized religion too inextricably bound to the status quo to save our nation and the world? Perhaps I must turn my faith to the inner spiritual church, the church within the church, as the true ecclesia and the hope of the world.
245.…I am thankful to god that some noble souls from the ranks of organized religion have broken loose from the paralyzing chains of conformity and rejoined us as active partners in the struggle for freedom.
246.We will reach the goal of freedom… because the goal of America is freedom.
247.…nonviolence demands that the means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek.
248.…we were able to put into effect the Gandhian principle: "Fill up the jails."
249.The reason I can't follow the old eye-for-an-eye philosophy is that it ends up leaving everygody blind.
250.In the face of this resolution and bravery, the moral conscience of the nation was deeply stirred and, all over the country, our fight became the fight of decent Americans of all races and creeds.




251.The marchers, many of them on their knees, ready to pit nothing but the power of their bodies and souls against Connor's police dogs, clubs, and fire hoses, stared back, unafraid and unmoving.
252.Don't hold [the children] back if they want to go to jail. For they are doing a job not only for themselves but for all of America and for all mankind. Somewhere we read, "A little child shall lead them." Remember there was another little child just twelve years old and he ... said, "I must be about my father's business."
253.The city of Birmingham discovered a conscience.
254.In the summer of 1963 a great shout for freedom reverberated across the land… It was a shout which awoke the consciences of millions of white Americans and caused them to examine themselves and to consider the plight of twenty million black disinherited brothers.
255.The shout burst into the open in Birmingham. The contagion of the will to be free, the spreading virus of the victory which was proven possible when… people stood and marched together with love in their hearts instead of hate, faith instead of fear - that virus spread from birmingham across the land and a summer of blazing discontent gave promise of a glorious autumn of racial justice.
256.Birmingham had made it clear that the fight of the Negro could be won if he moved that fight out to the sidewalks and the streets, down to the city halls and the city jails and - if necessary - into the martyred heroism of a Medgar Evers.
257.A social movement that only moves people is merely a revolt. A movement that changes both people and institutions is a revolution.
258.… no one could mistake that [the army's] most powerful weapon was love.
259.…no single factor … gave so much momentum… as the decision of the religious leaders of this country to defy tradition and become an integral part of the quest of the Negro for his rights.
260.We had strength because there were so many of us, representing so many more.
261. We had dignity because we knew our cause was just.
262.We had no anger, but we had a passion - a passion for freedom.
263.… the Emancipation Proclamation… came as a great beacon light of hope….
264.… we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.
265.This is not time to engage in the suxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism.
266.Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood.
267.Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.
268.…we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds.
269.Let us not seek to satisfuy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.
270.We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline.
271.Again and again, we must rise to th emajestic heights of meeting physical force with sould force.
272.We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity…
273.... unearned suffering is redemptive.
274.I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed…. That all men are created equal.
275.I have a dream … that one day… they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
276.With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope.
277.Man's inhumanity to man is not only perpetrated by the vitriolic actions of those who are bad. It is also perpetrated by the vitiating inaction of those who are good.
278.… the poverty of conscience…
279.… we must substitute courage for caution.
280.… we must be concerned not merely about who murdered them, but about the system, the way of life, and the philosophy which produced the murderers.
281.God still has a way of wringing good out of evil.
282.History has proven over and over again that unmerited suffering is redemptive.
283.These tragic deaths may lead our nation to substitute an aristocracy of character for an aristocracy of color.
284.We must not lose faith in our white brothers. Somehow we must believe that the most misguided among them can learn to respect the dignity and worth of all human personality.
285.Death is the irreducible comon denominator of all men.
286.… President Kennedy had become a symbol of people's yearnings for justice, economic well-being, and peace.
287.While the question "who killed President Kennedy?" is important, the question "What killed him?" is more important… in a sense we are all participants in that horrible act that tarnished the image of our nation. By our silence… willingness to compromise principle... the Vaseline of gradualism. readiness to allow arms to be purchased... [watching] movie and television [violent heros]... ee have [thereby] created an atmosphere in which violence and hatred have become popular passtimes.
288.So president Kennedy has something important to say to each ofr us in his death... that this virus of hate that has seeped into the veins of our natoin, if unchecked, will lead inevitably to our moral and spiritual doom.
289.The assassination of President Kennedy killed not only a man but a complex of illusions. It demolished the myth that hate and violence can be confined in an aritight chamber to be employed against but a few.
290.… hate is a contagion… it grows and spreads as a disease… no society is so healthy that it can automatically maintain its immunity.
291.If a smallpox epidemic had been raging in the South, President Kennedy would have been urged to avoid the area. There was a plague afflicting the South, but its perils were not perceived.
292.We were all involved in the death of John Kennedy. We tolerated hate; we tolerated the sick simulation of violence in all walks of life; and we tolerated the differential application of law, which said that a man's life was sacred only if we agreed with his views.
293.We were all involved in the death of John Kennedy… This may explain the cascading grief that flooded the country in late November. We mourned a man who had become the pride of the nation, but we grieved as well for ourselves because we knew we were sick.
294.Our feeling was that [nonviolent resistance], more that any other [possible approach], was the best way to raise the problems of the Negro people and the injustices of our social order before the court of world opinion, and to require action.
295.Only Judge Bryan Simpson… proved to be free enough of the "system" to preserve constitutional rights for St. Augustine's Negroes.
296.As the sayng goes, "every thousand-mile journey begins with the first step."
297.…progress [could come from] those whose love of their land was stronger than the grip of old habits and customs.
298.Demonstrations, experience has shown, are part of the process of stimulating legislation and law enforcement.
299.The federal government reacts to events more quickly when a situation of conflict cries out for its intervention.



300.…demonstrations have a creative effect on the social and plychological climate that is not matched by the legislative process.
301.Thos ewho have lived under the corrosive humiliation of daily intimidation are imbued by demonstrations with a sense of courage and dignity that strengthen their personalities.
302.Through demonstrations [the oppressed] learn that unity and militance have more force than bullets. They find that the bruises of clubs, electric cattle prods, and fists hurt less than the scars of submission.
303.... the bruises of clubs, electric cattle prods, and fists hurt less than the scars of submission.
304.[Oppressors] learn from deminstrations that [the oppressed] who have been taught to fear can also be taught to be fearless.
305.[Through demonstrations people] on the sidelines learn that inhumanity wears an official badge and weilds the power of law in large ares of the democratic nation of their pride.
306.… a factor of supreme importance… this legislation was first written in the streets [through nonviolent demonstrations]. The epic thrust of [the oppressed] who demonstrated … won strong… allies to the cause. Together they created a "coalition of conscience" which awoke a hitherto somnolent Congress.
307.… the vivid marks of [the legislation's] origin in th eturmoil of mass meetings and marches were on it, and the vigor and momentum of its turbulent birth carried past the voting and insured substantial compliance.
308.Can we have government in Missippi which represents all of the people? This is the question that must be answered in the affirmative if these United States are to continue to give moral leadership to the Free World.
309.The forces to bar the freedom road… seemed so formidable, so high in authrity, and so determined… In spite of this, there was a ray of hope. This ray of hope was seen in the new determination … to be free.
310.If I were constantly worried about death, I could not function.
311.After a while, if your life is more or less constantly in peril, you come to a point where you accept the possibility of death philosophically.
312.Their power was the moral power on which this nation was built. They deliberately ignored the man-made rules ... and appealed directly to the heart and soul of America and her people.
313.…what seems to be expedient today will certainly prove disastrous tomorrow, unless it is based on a sound moral foundation.
314.Occasionally in life there are those moments of unutterable fulfillment which cannot be completely explained by those symbols called words. Their meaning can only be articulated by the inaudible language of the heart.
315.… it is better to walk in dignity than to ride in busses [that are tools of oppression].
316.…this Nobel Prize was won by a…great people, whose discipline, wise restraint, and majestic courage has led them down a nonviolent course in seeking to establish a reign of justice and a rule of love across this nation of ours…
317.…th epower of th esoul is greater than the might of violence.
318.[The civil rights campaign] was the second great American Revolution.
319.I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality, and freedom for their spirits.
320.I believe that what self-centered men have torn down, other-centered men can build up.
321.[My wife] was the one who gave my life meaning.
322.… the nonviolent way… was the answer to the crucial and moral question of our time: the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to violence and oppression.
323.Ultimately a great nation is a compassionate nation.
324.No individual or nation can be great if it does not have a concern for "the least of these".
325.Deeply etched in the fiber of our religious tradition is the conviction that men are made in the image of God and that they are souls of infinite metaphysical value, the heirs of a legacy of dignity and worth.
326.If we feel this [infinite value of each soul] as a profound moral fact, we cannot be content to see men hungry, to see men victimized with starvation and ill health when we have the means to help them.
327.The wealthy nations must go all out to bridge the gulf between the rich minority and the poor majority.
328.I would have to convince them of the effectiveness of this weapon that cuts without woulding, this weapon that ennobles the man who wields it.
329.Poverty - especially that found among the [millions of] persons in the United States - is a tragic deficit of human will.
330.… bring the philosophy of nonviolence to all the world's people who grapple with the age-old problem of … injustice.
331.…injustice around the worldl. Poverty. War. When man solves these three great problems he will have squared his moral progress with his scientific progress.
332.Something tells me that the ultimate test of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and moments of convenience, but where he stands in moments of challenge and moments of controversy.
333.I'm talking about a very strong force [nonviolence] where you stand up with all your might against an evil system, and you're not a coward.
334.[Nonviolence]: You are resisting, but you come to see that tactically as well as morally it is better to be nonviolent.
335.…one must be…vigorous in condemning the continued existence in our society of the conditions of racist injustice, depression, and man's inhumanity to man.
336.… we must learn that hate is too great a burden to bear for a people moving on toward their date with destiny.
337.[We] must not seek to rise from a position of disadvantage to one of advantage, but to create a moral balance in society where democracy and brotherhood would be a reality for all men.
338.[The civil rights campaigners] were courageously providing dramatic witness to the evil forces that bar our way to the all-important ballot box. They were laying bare for all the nation to see, for all the world to know, the nature of segregationist resistance.
339.It was a fear rooted in feelings of inferiority.
340.…ordinances were contrived to make it difficult for [the oppressed] to move in concert.
341.After so many years of intimidation, the Negro community had learned that its only salvation was in united action.
342.The goal of the demonstrations… was to dramatize the existence of injustice and to bring about the presence of justice by methods of nonvilience… [One might expect to] achieve this goal when four things occurred: 1. Nonviolent demonstrators go into the streets to exercize their constitutional rights; 2. [oppressors] resist by unleashing violence against them; 3. Americans of good conscience in the name of decency demand federal intervention and legislation; 4. the administration, under mass pressure, initiates measures of immediate intervention and supports remedial legislation.
343.… the [oppressor] always first adked the [oppressed demonstrators] to desist and leave the streets rather than bring pressure to bear on those who commit the criminal acts. We were always compelled to reject vigorously such federal requests and relied on our allies, the millions of Americans across the nation, to bring pressure on the federal government for protective action on our behalf.
344.Our position always was that there is a wrong and right side to the questions of full freedom and equality … and that the federal government did not belong in the middle on this issue.
345.We realized that we had to exercise extreme caution so that the direct-action program would not be conducted in a manner that might be considered provocative or an invitation to violence.
346.I would lead our march to a confrontation with injustice to make a witness to our countrymen and the world of our determination to vote and be free.
347.I felt it was necessarty to seek a confrontation with injustice on Highway 80.
348.…I would rather die on the highways of Alabama than make a butchery of my conscience.
349.I'm asking everybody in the line, if you can't be nonviolent, don't get in here.



350.If you can't accept blows without retaliating, don't get in the line.
351.If you can accept [blows without retaliating], you will leave those state troopers bloodied with their own barbarities.
352.If you can accept [blows without retaliating], you will do something that will transform conditions here in Alabama.
353.As a nonviolent leader I could not advocate breaking through a human wall set up by the policemen.
354.We disengaged then because we felt we had made our point, we had revealed the continued presence of violence.
355.This is additional proof that segregation knows no color line. It attempts to control the movement and mind of white persons as well as Negroes. When it cannot dominate, it murders those that dissent.
356.We hoped to see, and we planned to see, the greatest witness for freedom that had ever taken place on the steps of the capitol of any state in the South. And this whole march added drama to this total thrust.
357.The threat of the free exercise of the ballot by the Negro and the white masses alike resulted in the establishing of a segregated society. The segregated Southern money from the poor whites; they segregated Southern churches from Christianity; they segregated Southern minds from honest thinking; and they segregated the Negro from everything.
358.We are moving to the land of freedom.
359.Let us march on poverty until not American parent has to skip a meal so that their children may eat.
360.March on poverty until no starved man walks the streets of our cities and towns in search of jobs that do not exist.
361.The road ahead is not altogether a smooth one. There are no broad highways to lead us easily and inevitably to quick solutions. We must keep going.
362.Our aim must never be to defeat or humiliate the [oppressor] but to wih his friendshp and understanfing.
363.We must come to see that the end we seek is a society at peace with itself, a society that can live with its conscience.
364.[The day of victory] will be a day nhot of the white man, not fo the black man. That will be the day of man as man.
365.Selma brought into being the second great awakening of the church in America.
366.Stalwart nonviolent actvists within our ranks had brought about a coalition of the nation's conscience on the infamous stretch of highway between Selma and Montgomery.
367."Your case is morally right and we are with you all the way."
368.As I stood with them and saw white and Negro, nuns and priests, housemaids and shop workers brimming with vitality and enjoying a rare comradeship, I knew I was seeing a microcosm of the mankind of the futre in that moment of luminous and genuine brotherhood.
369.We … had brought the whole issue of the right to vote to the attention of the nation.
370.If the worst in American life lurked in the dark streets of Selma, the best of American democratic instincts arose from across the nation to overcome it.
371.The criminal responses which led to the tragic outbreaks of violence in Los Angeles are environmental and not racial. The economic deprivation, racial isolation, inadequate housing, and general dispair of thousands of Negroes teaming in Northern and Western ghettoes are the ready seeds which gave birth to tragic expressins of violence.
372.…the riots grew out of the depths of despair which afflict a people who see no way out of their econimic dilemma.
373.… I believed that what happened in Los Angeles was of grave national significance. What we witnessed in Watts area was the beginning of a stirring of a deprived people in a society who had been by-passed by the progress of the previous decade.
374.The isue of police brutality loomed as one of major significance. The slightest discourtesy on the part of an officer of the law was a deprivation of the dignity that most of the residents of Watts came west seeking.
375.Whether it was true or not, the Negro of the ghetto was convinced that his dealings with the police denied him the dignity and respect to which he was entitled as a citizen and a human being.
376.They were the disorganized, the frustrated, and the oppressed. Their looting was a form of social protest. Forgotten by society, taunted by the affluence around them, but effectively barred from its reach, they were acting out hostilities as a method of relief and to focus attention.
377.The objective of the people ["have nots" who had rioted] with whom I talked was consistently work and dignity.
378.The paramount problem [among the "have nots" who had rioted] is one of economic stability for this sector of our society. All other advances in education, family life, and the moral climate of the community were dependent upon the ability of the masses of Negroes to earn a living in this wealthy society of ours.
379.In the South there is something of a shared poverty, Negro and white. In the North, white existence, only steps away, glares with conspicuous consumption.
380.Even television becomes incendiary, when it beams pictures of afluent homes and multitudinous consumer products at the aching poor, living in wretched homes.
381.Watts is closer to … the luminous symbol of luxurious living… and yet farther from it, than any other … community in the country.
382.The looting in Watts was a form of social protest very common through the ages as a dramatic and destructive gesture of the poor toward symbols of their needs.
383.When people are voiceless, they will have temper tantrums like a little child who has not been paid attention to. And riots are massive temper tantrums from a neglected and voiceless people.
384.[The rioters] were destroying a physical and emotional jail; they had asserted themselves against a system which was quietly crushing them into oblivion and now they were 'somebody."
385.As one young [rioter] put it, "We know that a riot is not the answer, but we've been down here suffering for a long time and nobody cared. Now at least they know we're here. A riot may not be THE way, but it is A way."
386.Violence only serves to harden the resistance of the ... reactionary and relieve the white liberal of guilt, which might motivate him to action and thereby leaves the condition unchanged and embittered.
387.… a mere condemnation of violence is empty without understanding the daily violence that our society inflicts upon many of its members.
388.The violence of poverty and humiliation hurts as intensely as the violence of the club.
389.This [Watts riots] is a situation that calls for statesmanship and creative leadership, of which I did not see evidence in Los Angeles.
390.What we did find [in Los Angeles] was a blind intransigence and ignorance of the tremendous social forces that were at work there.
391.And so long as this stubborn attitude [ of blind intransigence and ignorance] was maintained by responsible authorities, I could only see the situation worsening.
392.The atrociousness of some deeds may be concealed by legal ritual, but the destructiveness is felt with bitter force by its victims.
393.… a person participates in this society primarily as an economic entity.
394.At rock bottom we are neither poets, athletes, nor artists; our existence is centered in the fact that we are consumers, because we first must eat and have shelter to live. This is a difficult confession for a preacher to make, and it is a phenomenon against which I will continue to rebel, but it remains a fact that "consumption" of goods and services is the raison d'etre of the vast majority of Americans.
395....it remains a fact that "consumption" of goods and services is the raison d'etre of the vast majority of Americans.
396.When persons are for some reason or other excluded from the consumer circle, there is discontent and unrest.
397.Our primary objective was to bring about the unconditional surrender of forces dedicated to the creation and maintenance of slums and ultimately to make slums a moral and financial liability upon the whole community.
398.The only solution ... rested in our being able to mobilize both the white and black communities into a massive nonviolent movement, which would stop at nothing short of changing the ugly face of the ... ghetto into a community of love and justice.
399.No longer could we afford to isolate a major segment of our society in a ghetto prison and expect its spiritually crippled wards to accept the advanced social responsibilities of the world's leading nation.




400.We were confident that a convergence of many forces - religious, civic, political, and academic - would come about to demand a solution to [the] problems.
401.… [it was] existing deplorable conditions and the conscience for good to the cause that summoned us.
402.The civil rights movement had too often been middle-class oriented and had not moved to the grass roots levels of our communities.
403.… the great challenge facing the civil rights movement was to move into these areas to organize and gain identity with ghetto dwellers and young people in the ghetto.
404.[By moving with my family into the ghetto] I would not only experience what my brothers and sisters experience in living conditions, but I would be able to live with them.
405.The slum… was truly an island of poverty in the midst of an ocean of plenty.
406.[The region] boasted the highest per capita income of any city in the world but… out of the windows of my apartment in the slum of Lawndale… you saw only hundreds of children playing in the streets… you realized their overwhelming joy because someone had simply stopped to say hello; for they lived in a world where even their parents were often forced to ignore them.
407.Then you realized [the children's] overwhelming joy because someone had simply stopped to say hello; for they lived in a world where even their parents were often forced to ignore them. In the tight squeeze of economic pressure, their mothers and fathers both had to work; indeed, more often than not, the father will hold two jobs, one in the day and another at night. With the long distances ghetto parents had to travel to work and the emotional exhaustion that comes from the daily struggle to survive in a hostile world, they were left with too little time or energy to attend to the emotional needs of their growing children.
408.There [is] something wrong in a society that [allows such poor care of the children] to happen.
409.My neighbors paid more rent in the substandard slums … than [was] paid for modern apartments in the suburbs. The situation was much the same for consumer goods, purchase prices of homes, and a variety of other services.
410.This exploitation was possible because so many of the residents of the ghetto had no personal means of transportation. It was a vicious circle. You could not get a job because you were poorly educated, and you had to depend on welfare to feed your children; but if you received public aid... you could not own property, not even an automible, so you were condemned to the jobs and shops closest to your home.
411.Once confinded to this isolated community, one no longer participated in a free economy, but was subject to price fixing and wholesale robery by many of the merchants of the area.
412.Finally, when a man was able to make his way through the maze of handicaps and get just one foot out of the jungle of poverty and exploitation, he was subject to the whims of the political and economic giants of the city, which moved in impersonally to crush the little flower of success that had just begun to bloom.
413.It is a psychological axiom that frustration generates aggression.
414.This type of daily frustration was violence visited upon the slum inhabitants. Our society was only concerned that the aggressions thus generated did not burst outward. Therefore, our larger society had encouraged the hostility it created within slum dwellers to turn inward - to manifest itself in aggression toward one another or in self-destruction and apathy.
415.The larger society was willing to let the frustrations born of racism's violence become internalized and consume its victims. America's horror was only expressed when the aggression turned outward, when the ghetto and its controls could no longer contain its destructiveness. In amy a week as many Negro youngsters were killed in gang fights as were killed in the riots. Yet there was no citywide expression of horror.
416.During the summer, I realized that the crowded flat in which we lived was about to produce an emotional explosion in my own family. It was just too hot, too crowded, too devoid of creative forms of recreation. There was just not space enough in the neighborhood to run off the energy of childhood without running into busy, traffic-laden streets. And I understood anew the conditions which make of the ghetto an emotional pressure cooker.
417.And I understood anew the conditions which make of the ghetto an emotional pressure cooker.
418.Let us develop a kind of a dangerous unselfishness.
419.Motto SCLC: "To save the soul of America"
420.[Jesus] loved his enemies so fully that he died for them.
421.I share with all men the calling to be the son of the living God.
422.Beyond the calling of race, or nation, or creed, is this vocation of sonship and brotherhood.
423.We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for the "victims" of our nation, for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers.
424.[The US (in Vietnam)] are on the side of the wealthy, and the secure, while we create hell for the secure.
425.We are at a moment when our lives must be placed on the line if our Country is to survive its folly.
426.Every man must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest.
427.John F. Kennedy: "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."
428.I am convinced that if we as a nation are to get on the right side… we must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin a shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society.
429.When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquored.
430.True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice that produces beggars needs restructuring.
431.A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.
432.There is nothing except a tragic death wish to prevent us from reordering our priorities so that the pursuit of peace will take prescedence over the pursuit of war.
433.[A] positive revolution of values is our best defense… war is not the answer.
434.Our greatest defense… is to take offensive action in behalf of justice.
435.We must with positive action seek to remove those conditions of poverty, insecurity and injustice, which are the fertile soil…
436.It is a sad fact that because of comfort and complacency…and our proneness to adjust to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have not become the arch antirevolutionaries.
437.Every nation must now develop and overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole….
438.The disposessed of this nation, the poor both white and black, live in a cruelly unjust society. They must organize in a revolution against that injustice, not against the lives of the persons who are their fellow citizens, but against the structures through which the society is refusing to take means which have been called for, and which are at hand to lift the load of poverty.
439.The only real revolutionary, people say, is a man who has nothing to lose.
440.We in the West must bear in mind that the poor countries are poor primarily because we have exploited them through political or economic colonialism. Americans in partcular must help their nation repent of her modern economic imperialism.
441.… a world who's cultural and spiritual power lags so far behind its technological capabilities….