from the head of some philosophical Zeus. It was born from the wounds of despair and disappointment. It is a cry of daily hurt
and persistent pain.
Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, 1967.
Discrimination is a hellhound that gnaws at Negroes in every waking moment of their lives to remind them that the lie of their
inferiority is accepted as truth in the society dominating them.
Martin Luther King, Jr., speech, Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Atlanta, Georgia, August 16, 1967.
The limitation of riots, moral questions aside, is that they cannot win and their participants know it. Hence, rioting is not
revolutionary but reactionary because it invites defeat. It involves an emotional catharsis, but it must be followed by a sense of
futility.
Martin Luther King, Jr., The Trumpet of Conscience, 1967.
Martin Luther King, Jr., Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Stockholm, Sweden, December 11, 1964.
Man was born into barbarism when killing his fellow man was a normal condition of existence. He became endowed with aconscience. And he has now reached the day when violence toward another human being must become as abhorrent as eating
another's flesh.
Martin Luther King, Jr., Why We Can't Wait, 1963.
The curse of poverty has no justification in our age. It is socially as cruel and blind as the practice of cannibalism at the dawn ofcivilization, when men ate each other because they had not yet learned to take food from the soil or to consume the abundantanimal life around them. The time has come for us to civilize ourselves by the total, direct and immediate abolition of poverty
Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, 1967.