Food for thought, in honor of the holiday:
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
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… Tragic effort to live in monologue rather than dialogue.
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… As Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to be more immoral than individuals.
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We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct action campaign that was "well timed" in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant "Never." We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that "justice too long delayed is justice denied."
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We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was "legal" …
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… I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. … who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; … Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.
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… Right defeated is stronger than evil triumphant.
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I have tried to make clear that it is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends. But now I must affirm that it is just as wrong, or perhaps even more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends. … As T. S. Eliot has said: "The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason."
From the “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
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