We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.
Nonviolence means avoiding not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. You not only refuse to shoot a man, but you refuse to hate him.
Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into friend.
We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.
What do they [Vietnam] think as we test our new weapons on them, just as the Germans tested out new medicine and new tortures in the concentration camps of Europe?
We will match your capacity to inflict suffering with our ability to endure suffering.
Throw us into jail and we shall still love you. Bomb our homes and threaten our children, and we shall still love you. Send your hooded perpetrators of violence at midnight hour to beat us till we are half-dead, and we shall still love you. Be assured that we shall wear you down by our capacity to suffer. One day we shall win freedom, but not only for ourselves. We shall so appeal to your hearts and conscience that we shall win you over in the process and our victory shall be a double victory.
Our scientific powers have outrun our spiritual powers; we have guided missiles and mis-guided men.
Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable.
Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.
Communism forgets that life is individual. Capitalism forgets that life is social, and the kingdom of brotherhood is found neither in the thesis of communism nor the antithesis of capitalism but in a higher synthesis. It is found in a higher synthesis that combines the truths of both.
Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic.
Don't let anybody make you think God chose America as his divine messianic force to be a sort of policeman of the whole world. God has a way of standing before the nations with justice and it seems I can hear God saying to America "you are too arrogant, and if you don't change your ways, I will rise up and break the backbone of your power, and I will place it in the hands of a nation that doesn't even know my name. Be still and know that I'm God. Men will beat their swords into plowshafts and their spears into pruning hooks, and nations shall not rise up against nations, neither shall they study war anymore." I don't know about you, I ain't going to study war anymore.
When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am not speaking of that force which is just emotional bosh. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality.
