“A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on the installment plan.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“Love is creative and redemptive. Love builds up and unites; hate tears down and destroys. The aftermath of the ‘fight with fire’ method which you suggest is bitterness and chaos, the aftermath of the love method is reconciliation and creation of the beloved community. Physical force can repress, restrain, coerce, destroy, but it cannot create and organize anything permanent; only love can do that. Yes, love—which means understanding, creative, redemptive goodwill, even for one’s enemies—is the solution to the race problem.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“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 up defeating itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers.”
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Martin Luther King Jr
“Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.”
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Martin Luther King Jr
“If it falls to your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, sweep streets like Beethoven composed music ... Sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep streets so well that all the host of heaven and earth will have to pause and say: Here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well.”
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Martin Luther King Jr
“The old guard in any society resents new methods, for old guards wear the decorations and medals won by waging battle in the accepted manner.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“In some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty. ”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
“The end of life is not to be happy, nor to achieve pleasure and avoid pain, but to do the will of God, come what may.”
―
Martin Luther King Jr
