Somehow We Must Transform The Dynamics Of

Our Nettlesome Task Is To Discover How To Organize Our Strength Into Compelling Power.

I Was Much More Afraid In Montgomery When I Had A Gun In My House. When I Decided That I Couldn’t Keep A Gun, I Came Face-to-face With The Question Of Death And I Dealt With It. From That Point On, I No Longer Needed A Gun Nor Have I Been Afraid. Had We Become Distracted By The Question Of My Safety We Would Have Lost The Moral Offensive And Sunk To The Level Of Our Oppressors.

I Knew That I Could Never Again Raise My Voice Against The Violence Of The Oppressed In The Ghettos Without Having First Spoken Clearly To The Greatest Purveyor Of Violence In The World Today - My Own Government.... There Is Something Strangely Inconsistent About A Nation And A Press That Would Praise You When You Say, 'be Nonviolent Toward Jim Clark,' But Will Curse And Damn You When You Say, 'be Nonviolent Toward Little Brown Vietnamese Children!' There Is Something Wrong With That Press.

My Study Of Gandhi Convinced Me That True Pacifism Is Not Nonresistance To Evil, But Nonviolent Resistance To Evil. Between The Two Positions, There Is A World Of Difference. Gandhi Resisted Evil With As Much Vigor And Power As The Violent Resister, But True Pacifism Is Not Unrealistic Submission To Evil Power. It Is Rather A Courageous Confrontation Of Evil By The Power Of Love. . . .

Somewhere Somebody Must Have Some Sense. Men Must See That Force Begets Force, Hate Begets Hate, Toughness Begets Toughness. And It Is All A Descending Spiral, Ultimately Ending In Destruction For All And Everybody. Somebody Must Have Sense Enough And Morality Enough To Cut Off The Chain Of Hate And The Chain Of Evil In The Universe. And You Do That By Love.