Words for our time

"Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars... Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that."

"Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time; the need for mankind to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence. Mankind must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love." - Accepting Nobel Peace Prize, Dec. 10, 1964.

"Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men." Strength to Love, 1963

"Wisdom born of experience should tell us that war is obsolete. There may have been a time when war served as a negative good by preventing the spread and growth of an evil force... If we assume that life is worth living, if we assume that mankind has the right to survive, then we must find an alternative to war." - The Christmas Sermon On Peace, Dec 24, 1967

"A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death." - Beyond Vietnam — A Time to Break Silence

"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." - Where Do We Go From Here? Address to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, 16 August 1967

"When you are right you cannot be too radical; when you are wrong, you cannot be too conservative."

(All quotes by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.)