Martin Luther King Jr. Quotes

Civil disobedience has almost always been about expression. Generally, it's nonviolent, as defined by Henry David Thoreau, Gandhi, and King.

I knew A.J. Muste very well. I tried for a while to be like he was, and that is a total pacifist. But then Margot [my wife] hit me hard in the stomach one day to prove to me that I wasn't as perfect a pacifist as I thought I was.

The votaries of nonviolence cannot harbour violence even in thought, let alone the question of doing it.

Leo Tolstoy's life has been devoted to replacing the method of violence for removing tyranny or securing reform by the method of non­resistance to evil. He would meet hatred expressed in violence by love expressed in self­suffering.

Nonviolence of the strong is infinitely braver than their violence.

My nonviolence does recognize different species of violence, defensive and offensive.

For satyagraha and its offshoots, non-co-operation and civil resistance, are nothing but new names for the law of suffering.

Nonviolent action, born of the awareness of suffering and nurtured by love, is the most effective way to confront adversity.

The function of violence is to obtain reform by external means, the function of passive resistance, that is, soul-force, is to obtain it by growth from within, which, in its turn, is obtained by self-suffering, self-purification.

We are constantly being astonished these days at the amazing discoveries in the field of violence. But I maintain that far more undreamt of and seemingly impossible discoveries will be made in the field of nonviolence.

Our struggle consists in showing that our nonviolence is neither a cloak to hide our violence or hatred, nor a preparation for violence in the near or distant future.

The power of unarmed nonviolence is any day far superior to that of armed force.

Our nonviolence in respect of the Government is a result of our incapacity for effective violence.

I myself would go for nonviolence if it was consistent, if everybody was going to be nonviolent all the time. I'd say, okay, let's get with it, we'll all be nonviolent. But I don't go along with any kind of nonviolence unless everybody's going to be nonviolent. If they make the Ku Klux Klan nonviolent, I'll be nonviolent. If they make the White Citizens Council nonviolent, I'll be nonviolent. But as long as you've got somebody else not being nonviolent, I don't want anybody coming to me talking any nonviolent talk.

In a world built on violence, one must be a revolutionary before one can be a pacifist.

Anytime you tell a man to turn the other cheek or to be nonviolent in the face of a violent enemy, you're making that man defenseless. You're robbing him of his God-given right to defend himself.

One is called to live nonviolently, even if the change one works for seems impossible. It may or may not be possible to turn the US around through nonviolent revolution. But one thing favors such an attempt: the total inability of violence to change anything for the better

Gandhi was such an important figure to the pacifists of the '30s, and he was such an extraordinary embodiment of nonviolence, that I thought it was necessary to have him in there. When he would say something about the war, it was to some extent news - and he was sure to have a response that was different from that of other world leaders.

The law of nature gives a man the right to defend himself when he's attacked. And God's law itself gives a man the right to defend himself when he's attacked.so, peaceful suffering and passive resistance and all of that stuff is all right maybe in India somewhere, where the people in India outnumber the whites - about a million to one.But here in America, when you tell that's like an elephant sitting down on a - on a mouse in India with [Mahatma] Gandhi.

There is nothing but nonviolence to fall back upon for retaining our freedom, even as we had to do for gaining it.

The choice is not between violence and nonviolence but between nonviolence and nonexistence.

It must be emphasized that nonviolent resistance is not a method for cowards; it does resist. If one uses this method because he is afraid or merely because he lacks the instruments of violence, he is not truly nonviolent. This is why Gandhi often said that if cowardice is the only alternative to violence, it is better to fight.

The principle of nonviolent resistance seeks to reconcile the truths of two opposites-Acquiescence and violence -while avoiding the extremes and immoralities of both.

Nonviolent action, the Negro saw, was the way to supplement, not replace, the progress of change. It was the way to divest himself of passivity without arraying himself in vindictive force.

Nonviolence becomes meaningless if violence is permitted for self-defence.