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.
But at the end, if we are brave enough to love, if we are strong enough to forgive, if we are generous enough to rejoice in another's happiness, and if we are wise enough to know that there is enough love to go around for us all, then we can achieve a fulfillment that no other living creature will ever know, we can reenter paradise.
Every act of love is a work of peace no matter how small.
Love that is not jealous is neither true nor pure.
You care so much you feel as though you will bleed to death with the pain of it.
If thou dost love, proclaim it faithfully.
For what the lover would, that would the beloved; what she would ask of him that should he go before to grant. Without accord such as this, love is but a bond and a constraint.
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