Quotes on Breaking Silence

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.

We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and for justice throughout the developing world, a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.

Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and nonviolence, when it helps us to see the enemy's point of view, to hear his questions, to know his assessment of ourselves. For from his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition.

We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for the victims of our nation and for those it calls enemy, for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers and sisters.

"When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am not speaking of that force which is just emotional bosh. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality."

Take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim.

Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.

America never was America to me And yet I swear this oath - America will be!

The 'tide in the affairs of men' does not remain at the flood; it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is deaf to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residue of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: 'Too late...'

True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.

A true revolution of values will see that the western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.

Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter - but beautiful - struggle for a new world.

Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality.

Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God

We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now.

Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies.

We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society.

Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne,-_x000D_ _x000D_ Yet that scaffold sways the Future, and, behind the dim unknown,_x000D_ _x000D_ Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.

A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.

Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn, whatever state I may be in, therein to be content.