... They wander into the towns and see thousands of the children homeless, without clothes, running in packs on the streets like animals. They see their children degraded by our soldiers as they beg for food. They see their selling their sisters to the soldiers. Soliciting for their mothers. We have destroyed their two most precious institutions – the family and the village. We have destroyed their land and their crops. We have cooperated in the crushing of the nation’s only non-revolutionary political force – the United Buddhist Church. This is a role our nation has taken. The role of those who make peaceful revolutions impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasure that comes from the immense profits of oversees investment. ibid.
We are submitting them to in Vietnam is not simply the brutalizing process that goes on in any war where armies face each other and seek to destroy. We are adding cynicism to the process of death, for they must know after a short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved. Before long they must know that their government has sent them into a struggle among Vietnamese, and the more sophisticated surely realize that we are on the side of the wealthy, and the secure, while we create a hell for the poor. Surely this madness must cease. We must stop now. ibid.
The world now demands the maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. It demands that we admit and we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventures in Vietnam that we have been detrimental to the lives of the Vietnamese people. The situation is one in which we must be ready to turn softly from our present ways. The New Testament says, Repent. It is time for America to repent now. For the Kingdom of God is at hand. ibid.
As we counsel young men about military service we must clarify to them their nation’s role in Vietnam. And challenge them with the alternative of conscientious objections. And I say this morning that it is my hope that every young man in this country who finds this war objectionable, abominable and unjust will file as a conscientious objector. ibid.
A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, ‘This way of settling differences is not just’. This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. ibid.
And don’t let anybody make you think that God chose America as his divine messianic force to be some policeman of the whole world. God has a way of standing before the nations with judgment, and it seems as if I can hear God saying to America, You’re too arrogant. If you don’t change your ways, I will rise up and break the backbone of your power. And I’ll place it into the hands of a nation that don’t even know my name. Martin Luther King
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. Martin Luther King, attributed
An earthly kingdom cannot exist without inequality of persons. Some must be free, some serfs, some rulers, some subjects. Martin Luther King
And we’ve been in the mountain of indifference too long and ultimately we must be concerned about the least of these; we must be concerned about the poverty-stricken because our destinies are tied together. And somehow in the final analysis, as long as there is poverty in the world, nobody can be totally rich. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. And what affects one directly affects all indirectly. For some strange reason, I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. And you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. Martin Luther King, sermon Temple Israel of Hollywood 26th February 1965
An individual has not started living fully until they can rise above the narrow confines of individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of humanity. Every person must decide at some point, whether they will walk in light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness. This is the judgment: Life’s most persistent and urgent question is: What are you doing for others? Martin Luther King
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 the law. Martin Luther King
A riot is at bottom the language of the unheard. Martin Luther King, Where Do We Go from Here? 1967
A time comes when silence in betrayal. Martin Luther King, cited Ken Burns & Lynn Novick, The Vietnam War IV
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 King
Discrimination is a hellhound that gnaws at Negroes in every waking moment of their lives to remind them that the lie of their inferiority is accepted as truth in the society dominating them. Martin Luther King
Forgiveness does not mean ignoring what has been done or putting a false label on an evil act. It means, rather, that the evil act no longer remains as a barrier to the relationship. Forgiveness is a catalyst creating the atmosphere necessary for a fresh start and a new beginning. It is the lifting of a burden or the canceling of a debt. The words ‘I will forgive you, but never forget what you have done’ never explain the real nature of forgiveness. Certainly one can never forget, if that means erasing totally for his mind. But when we forgive, we forget in the sense that the evil deed is no longer a mental block impeding a new relationship. Likewise, we can never say, ‘I will forgive you, but I won’t have anything further to do with you’. Forgiveness means reconciliation, a coming together again. Without this, no man can ever love his enemies. The degree to which we are able to forgive determines the degree to which we are able to love our enemies. Martin Luther King
He [Muhammad Ali] is giving up his fame. He is giving up millions of dollars in order to stand for what his conscience tells him is right. No matter what you think of his religion, you have to admire his courage. Martin Luther King
History is a great teacher. Now everyone knows that the labor movement did not diminish the strength of the nation but enlarged it. By raising the living standards of millions, labor miraculously created a market for industry and lifted the whole nation to undreamed of levels of production. Those who attack labor forget these simple truths, but history remembers them. Martin Luther King, 1961
History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamour of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people. Martin Luther King, Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story, 1958
How soon ‘not now’ becomes ‘never’. Martin Luther King
Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable ... Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals. Martin Luther King
Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted. Martin Luther King
I always felt a sense of cosmic companionship so that the loneliness and the fear have faded away because of a greater feeling of security because of commitment to a moral idea. Martin Luther King, interview BBC 1961
I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. Martin Luther King
If an American is concerned only about his nation, he will not be concerned about the peoples of Asia, Africa, or South America. Is this not why nations engage in the madness of war without the slightest sense of penitence? Is this not why the murder of a citizen of your own nation is a crime, but the murder of citizens of another nation in war is an act of heroic virtue? Martin Luther King
If you lose hope, somehow you lose the vitality that keeps life moving, you lose that courage to be, that quality that helps you go on in spite of it all. And so today I still have a dream. Martin Luther King, The Trumpet of Conscience
If you will protest courageously, and yet with dignity and Christian love, when the history books are written in future generations, the historians will have to pause and say, There lived a great people – a black people – who injected new meaning and dignity into the veins of civilisation. Martin Luther King, address Montgomery 31st December 1955
I look forward confidently to the day when all who work for a living will be one with no thought to their separateness as Negroes, Jews, Italians or any other distinctions. This will be the day when we bring into full realization the American dream – a dream yet unfulfilled. A dream of equality of opportunity, of privilege and property widely distributed; a dream of a land where men will not take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few; a dream of a land where men will not argue that the colour of a man’s skin determines the content of his character; a dream of a nation where all our gifts and resources are held not for ourselves alone, but as instruments of service for the rest of humanity; the dream of a country where every man will respect the dignity and worth of the human personality. Martin Luther King, The Papers of Martin Luther King vol VII
I met Malcolm X once in Washington, but circumstances didn’t enable me to talk with him for more than a minute. He is very articulate ... but I totally disagree with many of his political and philosophical views – at least insofar as I understand where he now stands. I don’t want to seem to sound self-righteous, or absolutist, or that I think I have the only truth, the only way. Maybe he does have some of the answer. I don’t know how he feels now, but I know that I have often wished that he would talk less of violence, because violence is not going to solve our problem. And in his litany of articulating the despair of the Negro without offering any positive, creative alternative, I feel that Malcolm has done himself and our people a great disservice. Fiery, demagogic oratory in the black ghettos, urging Negroes to arm themselves and prepare to engage in violence, as he has done, can reap nothing but grief. Martin Luther King, interview Playboy January 1965
Injustice anywhere is a threat to injustice everywhere. Martin Luther King
In our glorious fight for civil rights, we must guard against being fooled by false slogans, as ‘right-to-work’. It provides no ‘rights’ and no ‘works’. Its purpose is to destroy labor unions and the freedom of collective bargaining ... We demand this fraud be stopped. Martin Luther King