Curtailment of free speech is rationalized on grounds that a more compelling American tradition forbids criticism of the government when the nation is at war... Nothing can be more destructive of our fundamental democratic traditions than the vicious effort to silence dissenters.
Interpretation
Free speech must be protected, especially during times of war, as silencing dissent undermines democracy.
In this quote, Martin Luther King, Jr. emphasizes the importance of free speech in a democratic society, particularly when the nation is involved in conflict. He warns that justifying the suppression of dissenting voices under the guise of patriotism severely threatens the foundational principles of democracy, leading to a chilling effect on discourse and the stifling of essential debates about governance and policy.
In practice
In a speech advocating for civil liberties at a public rally.
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.
It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creeds into law if it acquires the political power to do so, and will follow it by suppressing opposition, subverting all education to seize early the minds of the young, and by killing, locking up, or driving underground all heretics.
Any effort to make the death penalty speedier and less costly - more 'efficient' - will inevitably make it less just.
As long as there are rich people in the world, they will be desirous of distinguishing themselves from the poor.
Chastity does not mean abstention from sexual wrong; it means something flaming, like Joan of Arc.
The virtues we acquire, which develop slowly within us, are the invisible links that bind each one of our existences to the others - existences which the spirit alone remembers, for Matter has no memory for spiritual things.
As soon as man enters into a state of society he loses the sense of his weakness; equality ceases, and then commences the state of war.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.