Today, while many of us are enjoying our day off, I honor this man, Martin Luther King Jr, who was taken from us far too soon. His mission didn’t die with him but it is up to “us” to push our society to do better and be better. It’s past time we drown the hate with our love. Hate simply cannot survive all the love we have inside of us.
Below are a few quotes that drive MLK’s message home.
An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.
He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.
People fail to get along because they fear each other; they fear each other because they don’t know each other; they don’t know each other because they have not communicated with each other.
Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into friend.
Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.
Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction.
We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.
Capitalism does not permit an even flow of economic resources. With this system, a small privileged few are rich beyond conscience, and almost all others are doomed to be poor at some level. That’s the way the system works. And since we know that the system will not change the rules, we are going to have to change the system.
We must come to see that the end we seek is a society at peace with itself, a society that can live with its conscience.
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