Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
If you can't fly then run, if you can't run then walk, if you can't walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.
The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.
Faith is taking the first step even when you can't see the whole staircase.
"Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity."
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter
Intelligence plus character-that is the goal of true education.
There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right.
I have decided to stick to love...Hate is too great a burden to bear.
Only in the darkness can you see the stars.
We May Ignore Gandhi At Our Own Risk.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.
Let no man pull you so low as to hate him.
What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love... I know that love is ultimately the only answer to mankind's problems. And I'm going to talk about it everywhere I go.
I'm concerned about justice. I'm concerned about brotherhood. I'm concerned about truth. And when one is concerned about these, he can never advocate violence. For through violence you may murder a murderer but you can't murder murder. Through violence you may murder a liar but you can't establish truth. Through violence you may murder a hater, but you can't murder hate. Darkness cannot put out darkness. Only light can do that.
When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked “insufficient funds.” But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. [“I Have A Dream” Speech, 1963.]
I know that love is ultimately the only answer to mankind's problems. And I'm going to talk about it everywhere I go. I know it isn't popular to talk about it in some circles today. I'm not talking about emotional bosh when I talk about love, I'm talking about a strong, demanding love. And I have seen too much hate... I have decided to love. If you are seeking the highest good, I think you can find it through love. And the beautiful thing is that we are moving against wrong when we do it, because John was right, God is love. He who hates does not know God, but he who has love has the key that unlocks the door to the meaning of ultimate reality.
The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy. ― Martin >Luther<b> King, Jr.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal." I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave-owners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state, sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. 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. I have a dream today.
Just as to prohibit shouting fire in a crowded theater is a reasonable limitation on our universally appealing constitutional right to freedom of speech, the American people and their elected political representatives should debate whether to prohibit and punish speech that advocates violence against persons or groups engaging in non-violent speech and non-violent activities. The advocacy of violence against the non-violent ignites the passions of the “mad dogs” in every society and turns them loose against champions of new ideas intended to advance Peace, Prosperity and Freedom through Justice for all members of human society. The free and open marketplace for reasoned debate cannot function in an orderly way when invaded by suicide bombers or those who incite violence and killing of non-violent advocates of change. Ignoring such hate-mongering is a formula for spreading fear of free speech throughout society, leaving the pursuit of Truth, Love and Justice to those willing to martyr themselves for their commitment to the advance of civilization. What prompted a mentally unstable person like Jared Lee Loughner to shoot Rep. Gabielle Giffords, or John Hinckley, Jr. to shot Ronald Reagan? Who helped from afar to “pull the trigger” in the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Martin >Luther<b> King, Jr., Medgar Evers and other champions of justice throughout human history? To what extent was the preaching of religious and ideological extremists responsible for 9/11 and for the killing of thousands of innocent people by hate-filled suicide bombers? How can the War of Ideas be won if the advocacy of violence against the non-violent is not suppressed as a social cancer threatening the sacred marketplace of free and open debate? [Message on signing Move-On petition on Jan. 11, 2011.]
I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice. […] Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. [“Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” 1963.]
Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.
He who learns must suffer And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget Falls drop by drop upon the heart, And in our own despite, against our will, Comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God.
The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
Call it democracy, or call it democratic socialism, but there must be a better distribution of wealth within this country for all God’s children. [ Martin >Luther<b> King, Jr. and the Road to Socialism by Maurice Isserman in Civil Rights to Human Rights; Martin >Luther<b> King, Jr. , and The Struggle for Economic Justice by Thomas F. Jackson, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006; In King’s Own Words , from a 1965 speech to the Negro American Labor Council quoted in Jackson’s book.]
Cowardice asks the question, "Is it safe?" Expediency asks the question, "Is it politic?" And Vanity comes along and asks the question, "Is it popular?" But Conscience asks the question "Is it right?" And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must do it because Conscience tells him it is right.
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.
Men, for years now, have been talking about war and peace. But now, no longer can they just talk about it. It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence in this world; it's nonviolence or nonexistence.
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood... 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. I have a dream today...
It has been my conviction ever since reading Rauschenbusch that any religion which professes to be concerned about the souls of men and is not concerned about the social and economic conditions that scar the soul, is a spiritually moribund religion only waiting for the day to be buried. [“Pilgrimage to Nonviolence,” excerpted from Stride Toward Freedom , 1958.] I had also learned that the inseparable twin of racial injustice was economic injustice. Although I came from a home of economic security and relative comfort, I could never get out of my mind the economic insecurity of many of my playmates and the tragic poverty of those living around me. During my late teens I worked two summers, against my father’s wishes–he never wanted my brother and me to work around white people because of the oppressive conditions–in a plant that hired both Negroes and whites. Here I saw economic injustice firsthand, and realized that the poor white was exploited just as much as the Negro. Through these early experiences I grew up deeply conscious of the varieties of injustice in our society. [ Ibid. ] Man is not made for the state; the state is made for man. 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. Man must never be treated as a means to the end of the state, but always as an end within himself. [ Ibid. ] T]ruth is found neither in Marxism nor in traditional capitalism. Each represents a partial truth. Historically capitalism failed to see the truth in collective enterprise, and Marxism failed to see the truth in individual enterprise. Nineteenth century capitalism failed to see that life is social and Marxism failed and still fails to see that life is individual and personal. 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. [ Ibid. ] With all of its false assumptions and evil methods, communism grew as a protest against the hardships of the underprivileged. Communism in theory emphasized a classless society, and a concern for social justice, though the world knows from sad experience that in practice it created new classes and a new lexicon of injustice. [ Ibid. ] [C]apitalism is always in danger of inspiring men to be more concerned about making a living than making a life. 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-thus capitalism can lead to a practical materialism that is as pernicious as the materialism taught by communism. [ Ibid. ] Personalism’s insistence that only personality-finite and infinite-is ultimately real strengthened me in two convictions: it gave me metaphysical and philosophical grounding for the idea of a personal God, and it gave me a metaphysical basis for the dignity and worth of all human personality. [ Ibid. ] A sixth basic fact about nonviolent resistance is that it is based on the conviction that the universe is on the side of justice. Consequently, the believer in nonviolence has deep faith in the future. This faith is another reason why the nonviolent resister can accept suffering without retaliation. For he knows that in his struggle for justice he has cosmic companionship. It is true that there are devout believers in nonviolence who find it difficult to believe in a personal God. But even these persons believe in the existence of some creative force that works for universal wholeness. Whether we call it an unconscious process, an impersonal Brahman, or a Personal Being of matchless power and infinite love, there is a creative force in this universe that works to bring the disconnected aspects of reality into a harmonious whole. [ Ibid. ] [A]gape means recognition of the fact that all life is interrelated. All humanity is involved in a single process, and all men are brothers. To the degree that I harm my brother, no matter what he is doing to me, to that extent I am harming myself. [ Ibid. ]
The time is always right to do what is right
The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. [Speech, “Where Do We Go From Here?” by Martin >Luther<b> King, Jr. made to the Tenth Anniversary Convention of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (S.C.L.C) in Atlanta on August 16, 1967. Dr. King projected in it the issues which led to Poor People’s March on Washington. From Foner, Philip S., The Voice of Black America: New York, 1972.] A nation that will keep people in slavery for 244 years will “thingify” them and make them things. And therefore, they will exploit them and poor people generally economically. And a nation that will exploit economically will have to have foreign investments and everything else, and it will have to use its military might to protect them. All of these problems are tied together. What I’m saying today is that we must go from this convention and say, “America, you must be born again! . . .[ Ibid .] What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love. . . . [ Ibid .] Another basic challenge is to discover how to organize our strength in terms of economic and political power. [Ibid.] Power properly understood is nothing but the ability to achieve purpose. It is the strength required to bring about social, political and economic change. Walter Reuther defined power one day. He said, “Power is the ability of a labor union like the U.A.W. to make the most powerful corporation in the world, General Motors, say ‘Yes’ when it wants to say ‘No.’ That’s power.” [Ibid.] Now a lot of us are preachers, and all of us have our moral convictions and concerns, and so often have problems with power. There is nothing wrong with power if power is used correctly. [Ibid.] [A] host of positive psychological changes inevitably will result from widespread economic security. The dignity of the individual will flourish when the decisions concerning his life are in his own hands, when he has the means to seek self-improvement. Personal conflicts among husbands, wives and children will diminish when the unjust measurement of human worth on the scale of dollars is eliminated. [Ibid.] [T]he Movement must address itself to the question of restructuring the whole of American society. There are forty million poor people here. And one day we must ask the question, “Why are there forty million poor people in America?” And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy. And I’m simply saying that more and more, we’ve got to begin to ask questions about the whole society. We are called upon to help the discouraged beggars in life’s market place. But one day we must come to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. It means that questions must be raised. You see, my friends, when you deal with this, you begin to ask the question, “Who owns the oil?” You begin to ask the question, “Who owns the iron ore?” [Ibid.] One night, a juror came to Jesus and he wanted to know what he could do to be saved. Jesus didn’t get bogged down in the kind of isolated approach of what he shouldn’t do. Jesus didn’t say, “Now Nicodemus, you must stop lying.” He didn’t say, “Nicodemus, you must stop cheating if you are doing that.” He didn’t say, “Nicodemus, you must not commit adultery.” He didn’t say, “Nicodemus, now you must stop drinking liquor if you are doing that excessively.” He said something altogether different, because Jesus realized something basic – that if a man will lie, he will steal. And if a man will steal, he will kill. So instead of just getting bogged down in one thing, Jesus looked at him and said, “Nicodemus, you must be born again.” He said, in other words, “Your whole structure must be changed.” A nation that will keep people in slavery for 244 years will “thingify” them — make them things. Therefore they will exploit them, and poor people generally, economically. And a nation that will exploit economically will have to have foreign investments and everything else, and will have to use its military might to protect them. All of these problems are tied together. What I am saying today is that we must go from this convention and say, “America, you must be born again!” [Ibid.] [L]et us go out with a “divine dissatisfaction.” Let us be dissatisfied until America will no longer have a high blood pressure of creeds and an anemia of deeds. Let us be dissatisfied until the tragic walls that separate the outer city of wealth and comfort and the inner city of poverty and despair shall be crushed by the battering rams of the forces of justice. Let us be dissatisfied until those that live on the outskirts of hope are brought into the metropolis of daily security. Let us be dissatisfied until slums are cast into the junk heaps of history, and every family is living in a decent sanitary home. Let us be dissatisfied until the dark yesterdays of segregated schools will be transformed into bright tomorrows of quality, integrated education. Let us be dissatisfied until integration is not seen as a problem but as an opportunity to participate in the beauty of diversity. Let us be dissatisfied until men and women, however black they may be, will be judged on the basis of the content of their character and not on the basis of the color of their skin. Let us be dissatisfied. Let us be dissatisfied until every state capitol houses a governor who will do justly, who will love mercy and who will walk humbly with his God. Let us be dissatisfied until from every city hall, justice will roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream. Let us be dissatisfied until that day when the lion and the lamb shall lie down together. and every man will sit under his own vine and fig tree and none shall be afraid. Let us be dissatisfied. And men will recognize that out of one blood God made all men to dwell upon the face of the earth. Let us be dissatisfied until that day when nobody will shout “White Power!” — when nobody will shout “Black Power!” — but everybody will talk about God’s power and human power. [Ibid.]
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.
When people get caught up with that which is right and they are willing to sacrifice for it, there is no stopping point short of victory. [Memphis Speech, 1968] History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people. [Ibid.]
The hope of a secure and livable world lies with disciplined nonconformists who are dedicated to justice, peace and brotherhood.
This is the great problem of mankind. We have inherited a large house, a great ‘world house’ in which we have to live together, black and white, Easterner and Westerner, Gentile and Jew, Catholic and Protestant, Moslem and Hindu, a family unduly separated in ideas, culture and interest, who because we can never live apart, must live with each other in peace. However deeply American Negroes are caught in the struggle to be at last home in our homeland of the U.S., we cannot ignore the larger world house in which we are also dwellers. Equality with whites will not solve the problems of either whites or Negroes if it means equality in a world society stricken by poverty, and in a universe doomed to extinction by war.” [From Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community? (p. 167). Quoted in In Love We Trust , by Virgil A. Wood, 2004.]
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. -- Martin >Luther<b> King, Jr.
I have a dream. I have a dream that one day, on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. -- Martin >Luther<b> King, Jr.
I want to be the white man's brother, not his brother-in-law. -- Martin >Luther<b> King, Jr.
To Metternich they were wholly unwelcome. In spite of the ring-fence of censors, and custom-house officers, there was danger of the Liberal infection spreading to Austria, with disintegrating results; and the pose of the tsar as protector of German liberties was a perpetual menace. The zeal and inexperience of German Liberals played into his hands. The patriotism and Pan-Germanism of the gymnastic societies (_Turnvereine_) and students' associations (_Burschenschaften_) expressed themselves with more noise than discretion; in the South-German parliaments the platitudes and catchwords of the Revolution were echoed. Soon, in Baden, in Württemberg, in Bavaria, the sovereigns and the chambers were at odds, united only in a common opposition to the central authority. To sovereigns whose nerves had been shattered by the vicissitudes of the revolutionary epoch these symptoms were in the highest degree alarming; and Metternich was at pains to exaggerate their significance. The "Wartburg festival" of October 1818, which issued in nothing worse than the solemn burning, in imitation of Dr Martin >Luther, of Kamptz's police law, a corporal's cane and an uhlan's stays, was magnified into a rebellion; drew down upon the grand duke of Weimar a collective protest of the powers; and set in motion the whole machinery of reaction. The murder of the dramatist Kotzebue, as an agent of this reaction, in the following year, by a fanatical student named Karl Sand, clinched the matter; it became obvious to the governments that a policy of rigorous repression was necessary if a fresh revolution were to be avoided. In October, after a preliminary meeting between Metternich and Hardenberg, in the course of which the latter signed a convention pledging Prussia to Austria's system, a meeting of German ministers was held at Carlsbad, the discussion of which issued in the famous Carlsbad Decrees (October 17, 1819). These contained elaborate provisions for supervising the universities and muzzling the press, laying down that no constitution "inconsistent with the monarchical principle" should be granted, and setting up a central commission at Mainz to inquire into the machinations of the great revolutionary secret society which existed only in the imagination of the authorities. The Carlsbad Decrees, hurried through the diet under Austrian pressure, excited considerable opposition among the lesser sovereigns, who resented the claim of the diet to interfere in the internal concerns of their states, and whose protests at Frankfort had been expunged from the records. The king of Württemberg, ever the champion of German "particularism," gave expression to his feelings by issuing a new constitution to his kingdom, and appealed to his relative, the emperor Alexander, who had not yet been won over by Metternich to the policy of war _à outrance_ against reform, and took this occasion to issue a fresh manifesto of his Liberal creed. Entry: A
The question of the king's divorce soon became inextricably confused with another problem, whose first beginnings go back to a slightly earlier date. What was to be the attitude of England towards the Reformation? It was now nearly ten years since Martin >Luther had posted up his famous theses on the church door at Wittenberg, and since he had testified to his faith before the diet of Worms. All Germany was now convulsed with the first throes of the revolt against the papacy, and the echoes of the new theological disputes were being heard in England. King Henry himself in 1521 had deigned to write an abusive pamphlet against Luther, for which he had been awarded the magnificent title of _Fidei Defensor_ by that cultured sceptic Pope Leo X. About the same time we begin to read of orders issued by the bishops for the discovery and burning of all Lutheran books--a clear sign that they were reaching England in appreciable quantities. Hitherto it had been only the works of Wycliffe that had merited this attention on the part of inquisitors. In the Wycliffite remnant, often persecuted but never exterminated, there already existed in England the nucleus of a Protestant party. All through the reign of Henry VII. and the early years of Henry VIII. the intermittent burning of "heretics," and their far more frequent recantations, had borne witness to the fact that the sect still lingered on. The Wycliffites were a feeble folk, compelled to subterraneous ways, and destitute of learned leaders or powerful supporters. But they survived to see Luther's day, and to merge themselves in one body with the first English travelling scholars and merchants who brought back from the continent the doctrines of the German Reformation. The origins of a Protestant party, who were not mere Wycliffites, but had been first interested in dogmatic controversy by coming upon the works of Luther, can be traced back to the year 1521 and to the university of Cambridge. There a knot of scholars, some of whom were to perish early at the stake, while others were destined to become the leaders of the English Reformation, came together and encouraged each other to test the received doctrines of contemporary orthodoxy by searching the Scriptures and the works of the Fathers. The sect spread in a few years to London, Oxford and other centres of intellectual life, but for many years its followers were not numerous; like the old Lollardy, Protestantism took root only in certain places and among certain classes--notably the lesser clergy and the merchants of the great towns. Entry: VI