Monday, January 21, 2008

Quotes of Martin Luther King Jr.

+We cannot be truly Christian people so long as we flaunt the central teachings of Jesus: brotherly love and the Golden Rule.

+If a man hasn't discovered something he will die for, he isn't fit to live.

+Take the first step in faith. You don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.

+Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

+Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity

+One who breaks an unjust 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.

+Law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and . . . when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress.

+A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of Saint Thomas Aquinas, an unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal and natural law.

+Morality cannot be legislated but behavior can be regulated. Judicial decrees may not change the heart, but they can restrain the heartless.

+Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend.

+My study of Gandhi convinced me that true pacifism is not nonresistance to evil, but nonviolent resistance to evil. Between the two positions, there is a world of difference. Gandhi resisted evil with as much vigor and power as the violent resister, but True pacifism is not unrealistic submission to evil power. It is rather a courageous confrontation of evil by the power of love. .

+Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon . . . which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it. It is a sword that heals.

+Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.

+Mankind must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.

+The good neighbor looks beyond the external accidents and discerns those inner qualities that make all men human and, therefore, brothers.

+Many people fear nothing more terribly than to take a position which stands out sharply and clearly from the prevailing opinion. The tendency of most is to adopt a view that is so ambiguous that it will include everything and so popular that it will include everybody. Not a few men who cherish lofty and noble ideas hide them under a bushel for fear of being called different.

+A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on an installment plan.

+Rarely do we find men who willingly to engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think.

+We may have all come on different ships, but we are in the same boat now.

No comments: