To ignore evil is to become an accomplice to it.
Interpretation
Ignoring wrongdoing allows it to persist and grow.
This quote by Martin Luther King, Jr. emphasizes the moral responsibility individuals have to acknowledge and confront evil. By choosing to ignore injustices happening around us, we inadvertently support and enable them, thus failing to uphold our collective ethical standards and social justice.
In practice
In a speech advocating for social justice, one might say this quote to highlight the importance of speaking out against inequality.
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 seemed to her such nonsense-inventing differences, when people, heaven knows, were different enough without that.
Humanism is the philosophy that you should be a good guest at the dinner table of life.
Our great modern Republic. May those who seek the blessings of its institutions and the protection of its flag remember the obligations they impose.
I am grateful to President George W. Bush for PEPFAR, which is saving the lives of millions of people in poor countries and to both Presidents Bush for the work we've done together after the South Asia tsunami, Hurricane Katrina and the Haitian earthquake.
Oppression thrives on distance - on not actually meeting or seeing the oppressed.
A democracy is a government in the hands of men of low birth, no property, and vulgar employments.
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