There comes a time when silence is betrayal.

A riot is the language of the unheard.

War is a poor chisel to carve out tomorrow.

Stumbling and groping through the wilderness finally must be replaced by a planned, organized and orderly march.

The past is prophetic in that it asserts loudly that wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.

If you succumb to the temptation of using violence in the struggle, unborn generations will be the recipients of a long and desolate night of bitterness, and your chief legacy to the future will be an endless reign of meaningless chaos.

Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral. It is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everybody blind. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding; it seeks to annihilate rather than to convert.

Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love. It destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible. It leaves society in monologue rather than dialogue.

Violence ends by defeating itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers.

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.

The limitation of riots, moral questions aside, is that they cannot win and their participants know it. Hence, rioting is not revolutionary but reactionary because it invites defeat. It involves an emotional catharsis, but it must be followed by a sense of futility.

The more there are riots, the more repressive action will take place, and the more we face the danger of a right-wing takeover and eventually a fascist society.

One of the greatest casualties of the war in Vietnam is the Great Society… shot down on the battlefield of Vietnam.

In spite of temporary victories, violence never brings permanent peace.

Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal.

We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence.

We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent coannihilation. This may well be mankind’s last chance to choose between chaos and community.

We who in engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive.

There is something strangely inconsistent about a nation and a press that would praise you when you say, ‘Be nonviolent toward Jim Clark,’ but will curse and damn you when you say, ‘Be nonviolent toward little brown Vietnamese children.’ There is something wrong with that press.

I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality.

We must concentrate not merely on the negative expulsion of war but the positive affirmation of peace.

The choice is not between violence and nonviolence but between nonviolence and nonexistence.

Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and nonviolence, when it helps us to see the enemy’s point of view, to hear his questions, to know his assessment of ourselves.

For from his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition.

To ignore evil is to become an accomplice to it.

It’s not the violence of the few that scares me, it’s the silence of the many.

The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.

History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.

The silence of the good people is more dangerous than the brutaliy of the bad people.

Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic.

Keep feeling the need for being first. But I want you to be the first in love. I want you to be the first in moral excellence. I want you to be the first in generosity.

Hate begets hate; violence begets violence; toughness begets a greater toughness. We must meet the forces of hate with the power of love.

I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.

We must in strength and humility meet hate with love.

Unconditional love will have the final word in reality.

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’s pretty important.

There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love.

Everybody can be great… because anybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.

When I speak of love, I am speaking of that force which all the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life.

Love is the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality.

Power properly understood is nothing but the ability to achieve purpose… one of the great problems of history is that the concepts of love and power have usually been contrasted as opposites – polar opposites – so that love is identified with a resignation of power, and power with a denial of love.

 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.

I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.

Not everybody can be famous but everybody can be great, because greatness is determined by service.

At the center of non-violence stands the principle of love.At the center of non-violence stands the principle of love.

Those who love peace must learn to organize as effectively as those who love war.

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.

We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.

Perhaps the worst sin in life is knowing right and not doing it

Free at last, free at last. Thank God almighty we are free at last.