Martin Luther King 1958 speech highlights

MLK speech to Friends General Conference 6/27/58  Cape May, NJ

Privileged classes hold to power at all costs. Oppressed never stop wanting freedom

“Method of physical violence and its corroding hatred”, “the inseparable twin of western materialism”

if you succumb to the use of violence, “unborn generations will be the recipients of a long and desolate night of bitterness”, “an endless reign of meaningless chaos”

slavery and segregation: “It not only harms one physically, but it scars the soul and distorts the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority, and it gives the segregated a false sense of inferiority.”

Gandhi said if the only alternative to violence is cowardice, it is better to fight

“The nonviolent resistor not only avoids external physical violence, but he avoids violence of the spirit. He not only refuses to shoot his opponent, but he refuses to hate him.”

“The oppressed people of the world must not succumb to the temptation of becoming bitter or indulging in hate campaigns. We must somehow come to see that this leads us only deeper and deeper into the mire; to return hate for hate does nothing but intensify the existence of hate and evil in the universe. Somehow violence begets violence, toughness begets greater toughness, force begets a greater force. It is all a descending spiral, ending in destruction for all. The old “eye for an eye” philosophy ends up leaving everybody blind. So somehow people in this universe must have sense enough and morality enough to return love for hate. Nonviolence brings that love into being alongside the determination not to use physical violence.”

Love that is not eros or philia but agape, selfless love, “the love of God working in the lives of men” “Love is understanding, redemptive, creative goodwill for all men….It is a love that somehow redeems and transforms the soul of the opponent.”

-you don’t have to like your enemies, that’s the other kind of love

“faith that the universe is on the side of justice”

“…the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice. This is the faith and the hope that will keep us going.”

“The nonviolent resistor sees within the universe something at the core and the heartbeat of the moral cosmos that makes for togetherness.” i.e. community, inclusiveness, cooperation

“I never intend to adjust myself to economic conditions which take necessities from the masses to give luxuries to the classes.”

“…emerge from the bleak and desolate midnight of man’s inhumanity to man into the bright and glittering daybreak of freedom and justice.”