Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’

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

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

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.

The silence of the good people is more dangerous than the brutaliy of the bad 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 ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.

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

To ignore evil is to become an accomplice to it.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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 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.

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.