If your opponent has a conscience, then follow Gandhi and nonviolence. But if your enemy has no conscience like Hitler, then follow Bonhoeffer.
Interpretation
The quote advocates for different responses to adversaries based on their moral values.
Martin Luther King, Jr. highlights the importance of moral conscience in deciding how to confront enemies. He suggests that while nonviolence is a suitable strategy against those who possess a sense of right and wrong, a more decisive action may be required against those devoid of conscience, exemplified by figures like Hitler. This reflects a nuanced understanding of conflict and morality.
In practice
During a speech about peace and justice, one might reference this quote to illustrate moral choices in leadership.
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.
Many people have been getting too casual about climbing Everest. I forecast a disaster many times.
Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
No one's going to tell me how to make my own choices. For too many years, everybody told me what to say and what to do and how to be.
Where we come from does not determine who we can become. What we look like places no limits on what we can achieve. We should all have the right to express ourselves, all have the right to be heard, all have the right to be what we can be: To reach for the sky and touch the stars. No matter who we are, no matter whether we are man or woman, or rich or poor: _x000D_ My voice, my right. My voice counts.
There are historic situations in which refusal to defend the inheritance of a civilization, however imperfect, against tyranny and aggression may result in consequences even worse than war.
Of men who have a sense of honor, more come through alive than are slain, but from those who flee comes neither glory nor any help.
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