We have no alternative but to protest. For many years we have shown an amazing patience... But we come here tonight to be saved from that patience that makes us patient with anything less than freedom and justice.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the necessity of standing up against injustice after enduring patience for too long.
In this powerful statement, Martin Luther King, Jr. articulates the frustration that arises from long-standing oppression and the guarded patience that the oppressed have exhibited. He calls for a change, expressing that while patience has been demonstrated in the face of injustice, it must not lead to complacency; rather, it should fuel the urgent quest for freedom and justice, highlighting the moral imperative to protest and demand what is rightfully deserved.
In practice
This quote can be used in speeches advocating for civil rights.
This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love.
Music is the best consolation for a despaired man
We must meet the forces of hate with the power of love.
We may have all come on different ships, but we're in the same boat now.
Israel... is one of the great outpost of democracy in the world
One of the greatest casualties of the war in Vietnam is the Great Society... shot down on the battlefield of Vietnam.
If in this supreme test, in face of which the braggart falls silent and every heroic gesture is paralyzed, a man walks straight up to the cause of his fear and is not deterred from doing that which is good -- which ultimately means for the sake of God, and therefore not from ambition or from fear of being taken for a coward -- this man, and he alone, is truly brave.
There are no brave men and cowardly men in the world, my son. There are only brave men. To be born, to live, to die—that takes courage enough in itself, and more than enough. We are all brave men and we are all afraid, and what the world calls a brave man, he too is brave and afraid like the all rest of us. Only he is brave for five minutes longer.
I believe that each person is more than the worst thing they've ever done.
Bravery shows up in everyday life when people have the courage to live their truth, their vision and their dreams.
The strength to kill is not essential for self-defence; one ought to have the strength to die.
I was giving up. I would have given up - if a voice hadn't made itself heard in my heart. The voice said "I will not die. I refuse it. I will make it through this nightmare. I will beat the odds, as great as they are. I have survived so far, miraculously. Now I will turn miracle into routine. The amazing will be seen everyday. I will put in all the hard work necessary. Yes, so long as God is with me, I will not die. Amen.
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