Education






"As the years progress, what women and men will discover is that the most lasting and rewarding educational experiences come not from specific information provided in classroom lectures or assigned textbooks, but from the values obtained in active engagement in meaningful issues. We achieve for ourselves only as we appreciate the problems and concerns of others--and only as we see our own lives as part of a much greater social purpose. "
--Manning Marable, 1997

"As June approaches, with its graduation ceremonies and speeches, a thought suggests itself...Whatever career you may choose for yourself--doctor, lawyer, teacher--let me propose an avocation to be pursued along with it. Become a dedicated fighter for civil rights. Make it a central part of your life. It will make you a better doctor, a better lawyer, a better teacher. It will enrich your spirit as nothing else possibly can. It will give you that rare sense of nobility that can only spring from love and selflessly helping your fellow man. Make a career of humanity. Commit yourself to the noble struggle for human rights. You will make a greater person of yourself, a greater nation of your country, and a finer world to live in."
--Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., 18 April 1959

"I said to my children, 'I'm going to work and do everything that I can do to see that you get a good education. I don't ever want you to forget that there are millions of God's chidren who will not and cannot get a good education, and I don't want you feeling that you are better than they are. For you will never be what you ought to be until they are what they ought to be.'"
--Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., 7 January 1968




"I do believe that when there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence...I would rather have India resort to arms in order to defend her honor than that she should in a cowardly manner become or remain a helpless victim of her own dishonor. But I believe that non-violence is infinitely superior to violence, forgiveness is more manly than punishment...Let me not be misunderstood. Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will."
--Mahatma Mohandas K. Gandhi, 1920

"Non-violent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and establish such creative tension that a community that has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored...I am not afraid of the word tension. I have earnestly worked and preached against violent tension, and there is a type of constructive tension that is necessary for growth."
--Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., 1963

"Just as one must learn the art of killing in the training for violence, so one must learn the art of dying in the training for non-violence. Violence does not mean the emancipation from fear, but discovering the means of combating the cause of fear. Non-violence, on the other hand, has no cause for fear. The votary of non-violence has to cultivate the capacity for sacrifice of the highest type in order to be free from fear. He recks not if he should lose his land, his wealth, his life."
--Mahatma Mohandas K. Gandhi, 1940

"I contend that non-violent acts exert pressure far more effective than violent acts, for the pressure comes from goodwill and gentleness."
--Mahatma Mohandas K. Gandhi, 26 December 1924

"Truth and non-violence are not cloistered virtues but applicable as much in the forum and the legislatures as in the market place."
--Mahatma Mohandas K. Gandhi, 8 May 1937

" Nonviolence is absolute commitment to the way of love. Love is not emotional bash; it is not empty sentimentalism. It is the active outpouring of one's whole being into the being of another."
--Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., 1957

"While the nature of this account causes me to make frequent use of the prononun 'I,' in every important part of the story it should be 'we.' This is not a drama with only one actor. More precisely it is the chronicle of fifty thousand Negroes who took to heart the principles of nonviolence, who learned to fight for their rights with the weapon of love, and who, in the process, acquired a new estimate of their own human worth."
--Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., undated

"If we arrested every day, if we are exploited every day, if we are trampled over every day, don't ever let anyone pull you so low as to hate them. We must use the weapon of love. We must have the compassion and understanding for those who hate us. We must realize so many people are taught to hate us that they are not totally responsible for their hate. But we stand in life at midnight, we are always on the threshold of a new dawn."
--Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., 24 February 1956

"I believe that it is impossible to end hatred with hatred."
--Mahatma Mohandas K. Gandhi, 23 November 1924

"We have learned that change cannot come through war. War is not a feasible tool to use in fighting against the oppression we face. War has caused more problems. We cannot embrace that path."
--Rigoberta Menchú, 1995

"I think that nonviolence is one way of saying that there are other ways to solve problems, not only through weapons and war. Nonviolence also means the recognition that the person on one side of the trench and the person on the other side of the trench are both human beings, with the same faculties. At some point they have to begin to understand one another."
--Rigoberta Menchú, 25 September 1996

"...instead of giving a rifle to somebody, build a school; instead of giving a rifle, build a community with adequate services. Instead of giving a rifle, develop an educational system that is not about conflict and violence, but one that promotes respect for values, for life, and respect for one's elders. This requires a huge investment. Yet if we can invest in a different vision of peaceful coexistence, I think we can change the world, because every problem has a nonviolent answer."
--Rigoberta Menchú, 24 September 1996

"The reason I can' follow the old eye-for-an-eye philosophy is that it ends up leaving everyone blind. Somebody must have sense and somebody must have religion. I remember some years ago, my brother and I were driving from Atlanta to Chattanooga, Tennessee. And for some reason the drivers that night were very discourteous or they were forgetting to dim their lights...And finally A.D. looked over at me and he said, 'I'm tired of this now, and the next car that comes by here and refuses to dim the lights, I'm going to refuse to dim mine.' I said, 'Wait a minute, don't do that . Somebody has to have some sense on this highway.' And I'm saying the same thing for us here in Birmingham. We are moving up a mighty highway toward the city of Freedom. There will be meandering points. There will be curves and difficult moments, and we will be tempted to retaliate with the same kind of force that the opposition will use. But I'm going to say to you, 'Wait a minute, Birmingham. Somebody's got to have some sense in Birming
ham.'"
--Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., 3 May 1963

"World peace through nonviolent means is neither absurd nor unattainable. All other methods have failed. Thus we must begin anew. Nonviolence is a good starting point. Those of us who believe in this method can be voices of reason, sanity, and understanding amid the voices of violence, hatred, and emotion. We can very well set a mood of peace out of which a system of peace can be built."
--Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., December 1964

"In the event of a violent revolution, we would be sorely outnumbered. And when it was all over, the Negro would face the same unchanged conditions, the same squalor and deprivation--the only difference being that his bitterness would be even more intense, his disenchantment even more abject. Thus, in purely practical as well as moral terms, the American Negro has no rational alternative to nonviolence."
--Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., 1964

"I was out in Watts during the riots. One young man said to me...'We won!' I said, 'What do you mean, 'we won'? Thirty-some people dead--all but two are Negroes. You've destroyed your own. What do you mean 'we won'?' And he said, 'We made them pay attention to us.' When people are voiceless, they will have temper tantrums like a little child who has not been paid attention to. And riots are massive temper tantrums from a neglected and voiceless people."
--Dr. Martin Luther King, July 1967

"I would be misleading you if I made you feel that we could win a violent campaign. It's impractical even to think about it. The minute we start, we will end up getting many more people killed unnecessarily. Now, I'm ready to die myself. Many other committed people are ready to die. If you believe in something firmly, if you believe in it truly, if you believe it in your heart, your are willing to die for it, but I'm not going to advocate a method that brings about unnecessary death."
--Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., 1966

"I cannot make myself believe that God wanted me to hate. I'm tired of violence, I've seen too much of it. I've seen such hate on the faces of too many sheriffs in the South. And I'm not going to let my oppressor dictate to me what method I must use. Our oppressors have used violence. Our oppressors have used hatred. Our oppressors have used rifles and guns. I'm not going to stoop down to their level. We have a power that can't be found in Molotov cocktails."
--Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., undated

"The policy of the federal government is to play Russian roulette with the riots; it is prepared to gamble with another summer of disaster. Despite two consecutive summers of violence, not a single basic cause of riots has been corrected. All of the misery that stoked the flames of rage and rebellion remains undiminished. With unemployment, intolerable housing, and discriminatory education, a scrouge in Negro ghettos, Congress and the administration still tinker with trivial, halfhearted measures. Yet only a few years ago, there was discernible, if limited, progress through nonviolence. Each year, a wholesome, vibrant Negro self confidence was taking shape. The fact is inescapable that that the tactic of nonviolence, which had then dominated the thinking of the civil rights movement, has in the last two years not been playing its transforming role. Nonviolence was a creative doctrine in the South because it checkmated the rabid segregationists who were thirsting for an opportunity to physically crush Negroes.
Nonviolent direct action enabled the Negro to take to the streets in active protest, but it muzzled the guns of the oppressor because even he could not shoot down in daylight unarmed men, women, and children. This is the reason there was less loss of life in ten years of Southern protest than in ten days of Northern riots."
--Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., undated



Reconciliation
"The nonviolent resister must often express his protest through noncooperation or boycotts, but noncooperation and boycotts are not ends themselves; they are merely means to awaken a sense of moral shame in the opponent. The end is redemption and reconciliation. The aftermath of nonviolence is the creation of the beloved community, while the aftermath of violence is tragic bitterness."
--Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., 1957

"The method of nonviolence seeks not to humiliate and not to defeat the oppressor, but it seeks to win his friendship and his understanding. And thereby and therefore the aftermath of this method is reconciliation."
--Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., 1956

"Love is creative and redemptive. Love builds up and unites; hate tears down and destroys. The aftermath of the 'fight with fire' method which you suggest is bitterness and chaos, the aftermath of the love method is reconciliation and creation of the beloved community. Physical force can repress, restrain, coerce, destroy, but it cannot create and organize anything permamnent; only love can do that. Yes, love--which means understanding, creative, redemptive goodwill, even for one's enemies--is the solution to the race problem."
--Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., 1957

"I am convinced that love is the most durable power in the world. It is not an expression of impractical idealism, but of practical realism. Far from being the pious injunction of a Utopian dreamer, love is an absolute necessity for the survival of our civilization. To return hate for hate does nothing but intensify the existence of evil in the universe. Someone must have sense enough and religion enough to cut off the chain of hate and evil, and this can only be done through love."
--Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., 1957

"It is the best thing to blame ourselves when people cannot get on well with us. Boundless charity necessarily includes all or it ceases to be boundless. We must be strict with ourselves and lenient witth our neighbors. For we know not their difficulties and what they overcome."
--Mahatma Mohandas K. Gandhi, 18 August 1927

"In struggling for human dignity the oppressed people of the world must not allow themselves to become bitter or indulge in hate campaigns. To retaliate with hate and bitterness would do nothing but intensify the hate in the world. Along the way of life, someone must have sense enough and morality enough to cut off the chain of hate. This can be done only by projecting the ethics of love to the center of our lives."
--Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., undated

"The Negro who experiences bitter and agonizing circumstances as a result of some ungodly white person is tempted to look upon all white persons as evil, if he fails to look beyond his circumstances. But the minute he looks beyond his circumstances and sees the whole of the situation, he discovers that some of the most implacable and vehement advocates of racial equality are consecrated white persons."
--Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., 18 September 1955

"True reconciliation is never cheap, for it is based on forgiveness which is costly. Forgiveness in turn depends on repentance, which has to be based on an acknowledgement of what was done wrong, and therefore on disclosure of the truth. You cannot forgive what you do not know."
--Archbishop Desmond Tutu, 30 November 1995

"This morning the long awaited mandate from the United States Supreme Court concerning bus segregation came to Montgomery. Our experience and growth during this past year of united nonviolent protest has been of such that we cannot be satisfied with a court 'victory' over our white brothers. We must respond to the decision with an understanding of those who have oppressed us and with an appreciation of the new adjustments that the court order poses for them. We must act in such a way as to make possible a coming together of white people and colored people on the basis of a real harmony of interests and understandings. We seek an integration based on mututal respect."
--Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., 20 December 1956



Social Justice
"There are two types of laws: there are just laws and there are unjust laws...What is the difference between the two?...An unjust law is a man-made code that is out of harmony with the moral law...Paul Tillich has said that sin is separation. Isn't segregation an existential expression of man's tragic separtion, an expression of his awful estrangement, his terrible sinfulness?"
--Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., 1963

"We are not wrong in what we are doing. If we are wrong, the Supreme Court of this nation is wrong. If we are wrong, the Constitution of the United States is wrong. If we are wrong, God Almighty is wrong. If we are wrong, Jesus of Nazareth was merely a utopian dreamer that never came down to earth. And we are determined here in Montgomery to work and fight until justice runs down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream."
--Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., 5 December 1955

"In matters of conscience, the Law of Majority has no place."
--Mahatma Mohandas K. Gandhi, 4 August 1920

"The golden rule to apply in all such cases is resolutely to refuse to have what millions cannot."
--Mahatma Mohandas K. Gandhi, 24 May 1926


"...when we allow one group of people to look down upon another, then we may for a short time bring hardship on some particular group of people, but the real hardship and the real wrong is done to democracy and to our nation as a whole. We are then breeding people who cannot live under a democractic form of government but must be controlled by force. We have but to look out into the world to see how easy it is to become stultified, to accept without protest wrongs done to others, and to shift the burden of decision and responsibility for any action onto some vague thing called a government or some individual called a leader."
--Eleanor Roosevelt, 1939

"I must confess that I have enjoyed being on this mountaintop and I am tempted to want to stay here and retreat to a more quiet and serene life. But something within reminds me that the valley calls me in spite of all its agonies, dangers, and frustrating moments. I must return to the valley. Something tells me that the ultimate test of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and moments of convenience, but where he stands in moments of challenge and moments of controversy. So I must return to the valley--a valley filled with the misguided bloodthirsty mobs, but a valley filled at the same time with the little Negro boys and girls who grow up with the ominous clouds of inferiority forming in their little mental skies; a valley filled with millions of people who because of economic deprivation and social isolation, have lost hope, and see life as a long and desolate corridor with no exit sign. I must return to the valley--a valley filled with literally thousand of Negroes in Alabama and Mississippi
who are brutalized, intimidated, and sometimes killed when they seek to register and vote. I must return to the valley all over the South and in the big cities of the North--a valley filled with millions of our white and Negro brothers who are smoldering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society."
--Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., 27 January 1965



Social Transformation
"Nonviolence is not sterile passivity, but a powerful moral force which makes for social transformation."
--Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., 1964

"In the application of the method of non-violence, one must believe in the possibility of every person, however depraved, being reformed under humane and skilled treatment."
--Mahatma Mohandas K. Gandhi, 22 February 1942


"We have moved into an era where we are called upon to raise certain basic questions about the whole society. We are still called upon to give aid to the beggar who finds himself in misery and agony on life's highway. But one day, we must ask the question of whether an edifice which produces beggars must not be restructured and refurbished."
--Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., undated

"I am not sad that black Americans are rebelling; this was not only inevitable but eminently desirable. Without this magnificent ferment among Negroes, the old evasions and procrastinations would have continued indefinitely . Black men have slammed the door shut on a past of deadened passivity. Except for the Reconstruction years, they have never in their long history on American soil struggled with such creativity and courage for their freedom. These are our bright years of emergence; though they are painful ones, they cannot be avoided."
--Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., 1968