I just finished the MLK autobiography. Great great great!!! Here are just a few of the quotes i have found in the pages of this book.
"I must be concerned about unemployment, slums, and economic insecurity. I am a profound advocate of the social gospel."
"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."
"I was occasionally shocked when my intellectual journey carried me through new and sometimes complex doctrinal lands, but the pilgrimage was always stimulating; it gave me a new appreciation for objective appraisal and critical analysis, and knocked me out of my dogmatic slumber."
King speaking of pros and cons of liberal and conservative views.
"Liberalism.........its refusal to abandon the best light of reason. Its contribution to the philological-historical criticism of biblical literature has been of immeasurable value."
"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."
"Through education we seek to change attitudes and internal feelings (prejudice, hate, etc.); through legislation and court orders we seek to regulate behavior."
"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. I believe firmly that love is a transforming power that can lift a whole community to new horizons of fair play, good will, and justice."
King speaking of the bus boycott...
"We came to see that, in the long run, it is more honorable to walk in dignity than to ride in humiliation. So in a quiet 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."
"But if democracy is to live, segregation must die."
"O God, help me to see that where i stand today, I stand because others helped me to stand there and because the forces of history projected me there."
"And i remembered that we spend more than a million dollars a day to store surplus food in this country. I said to myself, 'I know where we can store that food free of charge--in the 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."
MLK speaking about India's independence and the breaking of the cast system.......
"Hundreds of millions of people who had never touched each other for two thousand years were now singing and praising all together."
"We protested with the ultimate aim of being reconciled with our white brothers."
"Our ultimate end must be the creation of the beloved community."
"Jail is depressing because it shuts off the world. It leaves one caught in the dull monotony of sameness. It is almost like being dead while one still lives. To adjust to such a meaningless existence is not easy."
"Human beings with all their faults and strengths constitute the mechanism of a social movement."
"As Gandhi had said, no one can ride on the back of a man unless it is bent."
"I suggested that only a 'dry as dust' religion prompts a minister to extol the glories of heaven while ignoring the social conditions that cause men an earthly hell."
"Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so must 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."
"I would agree with St. Augustine that 'an unjust law is no law at all'"
"A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God."
"Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority."
"Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will."
"Actually, time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively."
"So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be."
"I have watched white churchmen stand on the sideline and mouth pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities."
"So often 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 disturbed by the presence of the Church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the Church's silent--and often even vocal--sanction of things as they are."
"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."
"I always contended that we as a race 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."
"How long? Not long, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."
"HOwever, a mere condemnation of violence is empty without understanding the daily violence that our society inflicts upon many of its members. The violence of poverty and humiliation hurts as intensely as the violence of the club."
"Los Angeles could have expected the holocaust when it officials tied up federal aid in political manipulation."
"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."
"The phone rang daily with stories of the most drastic forms of man's inhumanity to man and I found myself fighting a daily battle against the depression and hopelessness which the heart of our cities pumps into the spiritual bloodstream of our lives."
"I am convinced that even violent temperaments can be channeled through nonviolent discipline, if they can act constructively and express through an effective channel their very legitimate anger."
"Bitterness has not the capacity to make the distinction between some and all."
"Like life, racial understanding is not something that we find but something that we must create."
"A productive and happy life is not something you find; it is something you make. And so the ability of negroes and whites to work together, to understand each other, will not be found read-made; it must be created by the fact of contact."
"Love is identified with a resignation of power and power with a denial of love."
"Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice. Justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love."
"I refuse to determine what is right by taking a Gallup poll of the trends of time. I imagine that there were leaders in Germany who sincerely opposed what Hitler was doing to the Jews."
"Hate is too great a burden to bear."
"It will be power infused with love and justice, that will change dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows, and lift us from the fatigue of despair to the buoyancy of hope. A dark, desperate, confused, and sin-sick world waits for this new kind of man and this new kind of power."
"Never again will i be silent on an issue that is destroying the soul of our nation and destroying thousands and thousands of little children in Vietnam." ....there is an existential moment in your life when you must decide to speak for yourself; nobody else can speak for you."
"I had to disavow and dissociate myself from those who in the name of peace burn, maim, and kill."
"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of convenience, but where he stands in moments of challenge, moments of great crisis and controversy."
"I do not believe our nation can be a moral leader of justice, equality, and democracy if it is trapped in the role of a self-appointed world policeman."
"Life is a continual story of shattered dreams. Mahatma Gandhi labored for years and years for the independence of his people. But Gandhi had to face the fact that he was assassinated and died with a broken heart, because that nation that he wanted to unite ended up being divided between India and Pakistan as a result of the conflict between the Hindus and the Moslems."
"In the final analysis, God does not judge us by the separate incidents or the separate mistakes that we make, but by the total bent of our lives. In the final analysis, God knows that his children are weak and they are frail. In the final analysis, what God requires is that your heart is right."
"Get somebody to say about you: 'he may not have reached the highest height, he may not have realized all of his dreams, but he tried.' Isn't that a wonderful thing for somebody to say about you? 'He tried to be a good man. He tried to be a just man. He tried to be an honest man. His heart was in the right place.' And i can hear a voice saying, crying out through the eternities, 'I accept you. You are a recipient of my grace because it was in your heart. And it is so well that it was within thine heart.'"
"But i know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough can you see the stars."
...King talking about Bull Connor turning on the powerful fire-hoses on the nonviolent marchers and badly hurting them.........
"We had known water. If we were Baptist or some other denomination, we had been immersed. If we were Methodist, and some others, we had been sprinkled--but we knew water. That couldn't stop us."
"Let us develop a kind of dangerous unselfishness."
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