Martin Luther King, Jr. Character Analysis

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.

The answer is found in the fact that there are two types of laws: there are just laws, and there are unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that “An unjust law is no law at all.”

We can never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was “legal” and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was “illegal.”

…the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Councillor or the Ku Klux Klanner but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice…

We must come to see that human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability.

So let him march sometime; let him have his prayer pilgrimages to the city hall; understand why he must have sit ins and freedom rides.

Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice, or will we be extremists for the cause of justice?

We will reach the goal of freedom in Birmingham and all over the nation, because the goal of America is freedom.

One day the South will know that when these disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters they were in reality standing up for the best in the American dream and the most sacred values in our Judeo-Christian heritage.

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.

The answer is found in the fact that there are two types of laws: there are just laws, and there are unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that “An unjust law is no law at all.”

We can never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was “legal” and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was “illegal.”

…the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Councillor or the Ku Klux Klanner but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice…

We must come to see that human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability.

So let him march sometime; let him have his prayer pilgrimages to the city hall; understand why he must have sit ins and freedom rides.

Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice, or will we be extremists for the cause of justice?

We will reach the goal of freedom in Birmingham and all over the nation, because the goal of America is freedom.

One day the South will know that when these disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters they were in reality standing up for the best in the American dream and the most sacred values in our Judeo-Christian heritage.