Speech Excerpts

Segregation

"To put it figuratively in biblical language, we've broken loose from the Egypt of slavery and we have moved through the wilderness of legal segregation and now we stand on the border of the promised land of integration. The old order of segregation is passing away."

"There can be no gainsaying of the fact that the system of segregation is on its deathbed today. The only thing uncertain about it is how costly the segregationists will make the funeral."

"Economic deprivation, social isolation, ignorance, poverty breed crime, whatever the racial group may be, and it is a tortuous logic to use the tragic results of segregation as an argument for the continuation of it."

Challenge to Action

"The world in which we live is geographically one. Now we are challenged to make it one in terms of brotherhood."

"Now through our ethical and moral commitment, we must make of it a brotherhood. We must all learn to live together as brothers or we will perish together as fools. This is the great challenge of the hour. This is true of individuals. It is true of nations. No individual can live alone. No nation can live alone."

"I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. You can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality."

"[W]e're challenged after working in the realm of ideas, to move out into the arena of social action and to work passionately and unrelentingly to make racial justice a reality."

"[W]e must never substitute a doctrine of Black supremacy for white supremacy. For the doctrine of Black supremacy is as dangerous as white supremacy. God is not interested merely in the freedom of black men and brown men and yellow men but God is interested in the freedom of the whole human race, the creation of a society where all men will live together as brothers."

Need for Civil Rights Legislation

"But we must go on to say that while it may be true that morality cannot be legislated, behavior can be regulated. It may be true that the law cannot change the heart but it can restrain the heartless. 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 is pretty important, also."

"There is a great need at this hour for all people of good will of this nation to get together and say that this legislation must be passed and that it must be passed soon."

"I'm convinced that if it is not passed, this ugly sore of racial segregation on the body politic of our nation will suddenly turn malignant and we will be inflicted with an incurable cancer that will totally destroy the soul of American society."

Philosophy of Nonviolence

"I am still convinced that nonviolent resistance is the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for freedom and justice. There is power and real power in this method."

"If he sets out to beat you, you develop the quiet courage of accepting blows without retaliating . . . If he puts you in jail, you go in that jail and transform it from a dungeon of shame to a haven of freedom and human dignity. Even if he tries to kill you, you develop the inner conviction that some things are so precious, that there are some things so dear, some things so eternally worthful, that they are worth dying for. If an individual has not discovered something that he will die for, he isn't fit to live."

Philosophy of Love

"[T]here is another thing about this philosophy that says you can stand before an unjust system and resist it with all your might and yet maintain an attitude of active good will toward the perpetrators of that unjust system. So it goes on to say that the ethic of love can stand at the center of the nonviolent movement."

"[W]hen I speak of love, . . . this whole idea is misunderstood . . . [T]he Greek language comes out with the word, agape. . . . Agape is creative, understanding, redemptive good will for all men. Theologians would say that this is the love of God operating in the human heart. When one rises to love on this level, he loves every man. He rises to the point of loving the person who does the evil deed while hating the deed that the person does. I believe that this is the kind of love that can carry us through this period of transition."

"So in many instances, we have been able to stand before the most violent opponents and say in substance, we will meet your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We will meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will and we will still love you."

"[T]hrow us in jail and we will still love you. Threaten our children and bomb our homes and our churches and as difficult as it is, we will still love you. Send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our communities at the midnight hours and drag us out on some wayside road and beat us and leave us half-dead, and as difficult as that is, we will still love you. But be assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer and one day we will win our freedom. We will not only win freedom for ourselves, we will so appeal to your heart and your conscience that we will win you in the process and our victory will be a double victory."

Nuclear Disarmament

"It is no longer the choice between violence and nonviolence. It is either nonviolence or nonexistence, and the alternative to disarmament."

"The alternative to strengthening the United Nations and thereby disarming the whole world may well be a civilization plunged into the abyss of annihilation."

Concluding Remarks

"[I]f this problem is to be solved there must be a sort of divine discontent all over this nation."

"I believe that we will be able to emerge from the bleak and desolate midnight of man's inhumanity to man into the bright and glittering daybreak of freedom and justice. My faith is that somehow this problem will be solved."

"In spite of the difficulties of this hour, I am convinced that we have the resources to make the American Dream a reality."

"With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation to a beautiful symphony of brotherhood."