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In Memory: MLKJ

MLKJ

“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”

“I submit to you that if a man hasn’t discovered something he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.”

“I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. That is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.”

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”

“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”

“Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’”

– The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968)

5 Responses to "In Memory: MLKJ"

John D. Young says:

January 15, 2007 at 4:05 pm

Thanks for your post of those riveting words of King. They are exactly the words we need to hear and absorb.
As we try to find answers we cannot do better than:
â€œDarkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.â€
Juan Vasquez says:

January 18, 2007 at 9:18 am

nice quotes
Jakob says:

May 5, 2007 at 7:17 pm

“The greatest purveyor of violence in the world: my own government, I cannot be silent.”

-MLK
Cara Michele says:

May 5, 2007 at 8:59 pm

Thanks for sharing that quote, Jakob. It comes from Dr. King’s April 1967 speech about Vietnam to members of the clergy and laity: “A Time to Break the Silence:”

“As I have walked among the desperate, rejected and angry young men I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they asked — and rightly so — what about Vietnam? They asked if our own nation wasn’t using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today — my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent.”
L says:

May 6, 2007 at 1:14 am

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. n the one hand we are called to play the good Samaritan on life’s roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: “This is not just.” It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: “This is not just.” The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands 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 veins of people 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.

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