regulations; his police make a mockery of law; he violates laws on equal employment and education and the provisions of civilservices. The slums are the handiwork of a vicious system of the white society; Negroes live in them, but they do not make
them, any more than a prisoner makes a prison.
Martin Luther King, Jr., The Trumpet of Conscience, 1967.
It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that's prettyimportant.
Martin Luther King, Jr., Wall Street Journal, November 13, 1962.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplieshate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction....The chain reactionof evil--hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars--must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of
annihilation.
Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength To Love, 1963.
Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength to Love, 1963.
Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man's sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true.
Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength To Love, 1963.
Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.
Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength to Love, 1963.
I am aware that there are many who wince at a distinction between property and persons--who hold both sacrosanct. My
views are not so rigid. A life is sacred. Property is intended to serve life, and no matter how much we surround it with rights and
respect, it has no personal being. It is part of the earth man walks on; it is not man.
Martin Luther King, Jr., The Trumpet of Conscience, 1967.