I became convinced that noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. No other person has been more eloquent and passionate in getting this idea across than Henry David Thoreau. As a result of his writings and personal witness, we are the heirs of a legacy of creative protest.
Interpretation
Noncooperation with evil is as essential a moral duty as cooperating with good.
Martin Luther King, Jr. emphasizes the importance of actively resisting evil in society, arguing that turning a blind eye to wrongdoing is not a neutral stance but a moral failing. He acknowledges the influence of Henry David Thoreau, whose ideas on civil disobedience inspire individuals to engage in creative forms of protest against injustice.
In practice
During a speech at a civil rights rally to encourage active resistance against injustice.
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.
As a woman in Saudi Arabia, you have one of two options. You either lose your mind - which at first happened to me because I fell into a deep depression - or you become a feminist.
Americans love to fight, traditionally. All real Americans love the sting and clash of battle.
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered, We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered.
Certainly I'm angry at the way Indians have been treated and continue to be treated. But I don't think it's a helpless emotion.
When life seems hard, the courageous do not lie down and accept defeat; instead, they are all the more determined to struggle for a better future.
Any time I saw people treated unfairly because of race, creed, whatever - it struck a nerve.
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