Martin Luther King Jr Day: Quotes and Reflections

Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.
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I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.
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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.
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Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.
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Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars... Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.
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The hope of a secure and livable world lies with disciplined nonconformists who are dedicated to justice, peace and brotherhood.
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Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time; the need for mankind to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence. Mankind must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.

Anyone growing up during the turbulent times of the 1960s as I did could not help but hear the great messages of the time: the rejection of violence, the pull of the need for love, the call to dream big, the belief in the triumph of right over righteousness, the coming together of diverse people who rallied around one goal: peace.

It was a time of extremes - not unlike what we are living through now.

It's not unusual then for some of us to feel the lack of strong, idealistic and truthful leaders in the form of idols to lead the way, as Martin Luther King Jr embodied. We know how necessary they are. We also remember how threatened the establishment was by their popularity and how shocked and dismayed we were when they were taken away from us so prematurely.

Although they are gone, their spirit and example lives on. That can never die.

So, they left it to all of us to be leaders - to be the conscience of a society that strays into violence and intolerance; to grasp the legacy of hope in action and to fight for the power of love in the face of despair - a truly overwhelming challenge in times like these. We don't need to simply believe in that power. We know it works. And because of that, in the midst of weariness, we carry on and we stand tall for those principles that ensure there will and can be a balance in a world that at times becomes so sadly enamored with negativity and base primitive instincts that would simply see us destroy each other. We are more than that. We are love.

Martin Luther King Jr - "I have a dream..."