Quotessence
Home / Books / Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story

Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story

Book by Martin Luther King Jr. · 10 quotes · African Americans, Blacks, Civil Rights

Filter quotes by topic

AllAfrican AmericansBlacksCivil RightsActivismNonviolenceSegregationRaceMontgomery Bus BoycottJusticeNonviolent ResistanceOrganizingRace RelationsViolenceLoveMontgomeryWhitesHateRacismEvilIntegration

Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story Quotes

“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 he resisted with love instead of hate. True pacifism is not unrealistic submission to evil power, as [Reinhold] Niebuhr contends. It is rather a courageous confrontation of evil by the power of love, in the faith that it is better to be the recipient of violence than the inflicter of it, since the latter only multiplies the existence of violence and bitterness in the universe, while the former may develop a sense of shame in the opponent, and thereby bring about a transformation and change of heart.”

LoveEvilChangeResistanceNonviolenceSocial ReformGandhiPacifismNonviolent ResistanceReinhold Niebuhr
Book:Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story
Create image

“In the final analysis, agape means a recognition of the fact that all life is interrelated. All humanity is involved in a single process, and all men are brothers. To the degree that I harm my brother, no matter what he is doing to me, to that extent I am harming myself. For example, white men often refuse federal aid to education in order to avoid giving the Negro his rights; but because all men are brothers they cannot deny Negro children without harming their own. They end, all efforts to the contrary, by hurting themselves. Why is this? Because men are brothers. If you harm me, you harm yourself. Love, agape, is the only cement that can hold this broken community together. When I am commanded to love, I am commanded to restore community, to resist injustice, and to meet the needs of my brothers.”

LoveHumanityUnderstandingCommunityJusticeBrotherhoodGood WillAgapeMutualityInterrelatedness
Book:Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story
Create image

“Agape is not a weak, passive love. It is love in action. Agape is love seeking to preserve and create community. It is insistence on community even when one seeks to break it. Agape is a willingness to sacrifice in the interest of mutuality. Agape is a willingness to go to any length to restore community. It doesn't stop at the first mile, but it goes the second mile to restore community. It is a willingness to forgive, not seven times, but seventy times seven to restore community.”

LoveUnderstandingCommunityGood WillAgapeMutualitySacrificingGood Will Toward Men
Book:Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story
Create image

“Agape is disinterested love. It is a love in which the individual seeks not his own good, but the good of his neighbor (I Cor. 10:24). Agape does not begin by discriminating between worthy and unworthy people, or any qualities people possess. It begins by loving others for their sakes. It is an entirely "neighbor-regarding concern for others," which discovers the neighbor in every man it meets. Therefore agape makes no distinction between friend and enemy; it is directed toward both.”

LoveUnderstandingConcernNonviolenceGood WillNeighborsAgapeGood Will Toward Men
Book:Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story
Create image

“In my weekly remarks as president, I stressed that the use of violence in our struggle would be both impractical and immoral. To meet hate with retaliatory hate would do nothing but intensify the existence of evil in the universe. Hate begets hate; violence begets violence; toughness begets a greater toughness. We must meet the forces of hate with the power of love; we must meet physical force with soul force. Our aim must never be to defeat or humiliate the white man, but to win his friendship and understanding.”

LoveHateEvilRaceViolenceCivil RightsNonviolenceToughnessPassive ResistanceNonviolent Cooperation
Book:Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story
Create image

“A second way that oppressed people sometimes deal with oppression is to resort to physical violence and corroding hatred. Violence often brings about momentary results. Nations have frequently won their independence in battle. But in spite of temporary victories, violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem; it merely creates new and more complicated ones. Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral. It is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everybody blind. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding; it seeks to annihilate rather than to convert. Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love. It destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible. It leaves society in monologue rather than dialogue. Violence ends by defeating itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers.”

LoveHateViolenceHatredCivil RightsOppressionBrotherhoodOppressedHumiliationRacial Justice
Book:Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story
Create image

“A fifth point concerning nonviolent resistance is that it avoids not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. The nonviolent resister not only refuses to shoot his opponent but he also refuses to hate him. At the center of nonviolence stands the principle of love. The nonviolent resister would contend that in the struggle for human dignity, the oppressed people of the world must not succumb to the temptation of becoming bitter or indulging in hate campaigns. To retaliate in kind would do nothing but intensify the existence of hate in the universe. Along the way of life, someone must have sense enough and morality enough to cut off the chain of hate. This can only be done by projecting the ethic of love to the center of our lives.”

LoveHateActivismBitternessNonviolenceNonviolent ResistanceOrganizing
Book:Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story
Create image

“Love, for Gandhi, was a potent instrument for social and collective transformation. It was in this Gandhian emphasis on love and nonviolence that I discovered the method for social reform that I had been seeking for so many months. The intellectual and moral satisfaction that I failed to gain from the utilitarianism of Bentham and Mill, the revolutionary methods of Marx and Lenin, the social-contracts theory of Hobbes, the “back to nature” optimism of Rousseau, the superman philosophy of Nietzsche, I found in the nonviolent resistance philosophy of Gandhi. I came to feel that this was the only morally and practically sound method open to oppressed people in their struggle for freedom.”

LoveJusticeFreedomActivismNonviolenceSocial ReformGandhiNonviolent ResistanceOrganizing
Book:Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story
Create image