Love has within it a redemptive power. And there is a power there that eventually transforms individuals. Just keep being friendly to that person. Just keep loving them, and they can't stand it too long. Oh, they react in many ways in the beginning. They react with guilt feelings, and sometimes they'll hate you a little more at that transition period, but just keep loving them. And by the power of your love they will break down under the load. That's love, you see. It is redemptive.
Interpretation
Love holds the capacity to redeem and transform individuals over time.
In this quote, Martin Luther King, Jr. suggests that love possesses a profound power that can bring about change in people. He emphasizes the importance of persistently showing love and kindness, even when faced with resistance or negativity from others. He believes that such unconditional love can eventually lead to transformation and redemption, as individuals cannot withstand the weight of true love indefinitely, despite their initial reactions of guilt or enmity. Ultimately, love is portrayed as a powerful force that can lead to healing and change.
In practice
In a speech about community and acceptance, one might quote this to encourage people to show love towards those who struggle.
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.
Every time I read to her, it was like I was courting her, because sometimes, just sometimes, she would fall in love with me again, just like she had a long time ago. And that's the most wonderful feeling in the world. How many people are ever given that chance? To have someone you love fall in love with you over and over?
I don't care who anybody sleeps with. If a couple has been together all that time - and there are gay relationships that are more solid than some heterosexual ones - I think it's fine if they want to get married. I don't know how people can get so anti-something.
He had no plans, no definite intentions, except to kiss her lips again, to hold her in his arms.
Only love, and not reason, yields kind thoughts.
I am convinced that unconditional love is the most powerful known stimulant of the immune system. If I told patients to raise their blood levels of immune globulins or killer T cells, no one would know how. But if I can teach them to love themselves and others fully, the same changes happen automatically. The truth is: love heals.
True love is a discipline in which each divines the secret self of the other and refuses to believe in the mere daily self.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.