The recent statement of your executive committee are the sentiments of my own heart and I found myself in full accord when I read its opening lines: "A time comes when silence is betrayal." That time has come for us in relation to Vietnam. Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak.
Martin Luther King, Jr.Personalism's insistence that only personality-finite and infinite-is ultimately real strengthened me in two convictions: it gave me metaphysical and philosophical grounding for the idea of a personal God, and it gave me a metaphysical basis for the dignity and worth of all human personality.
Martin Luther King, Jr.Life's most persistent and urgent question is, 'What are you doing for others?'
Martin Luther King, Jr.I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham.
Martin Luther King, Jr.Ordinarily, a person leaving a courtroom with a conviction behind him would wear a somber face. But I left with a smile. I knew that I was a convicted criminal, but I was proud of my crime.
Martin Luther King, Jr.We were not unmindful of the difficulties involved. So we decided to go through a process of self-purification.
Martin Luther King, Jr.Man is not made for the state; the state is made for man. To deprive man of freedom is to relegate him to the status of a thing, rather than elevate him to the status of a person. Man must never be treated as a means to the end of the state, but always as an end within himself.
Martin Luther King, Jr.