The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.

by Martin Luther King Jr.

I became convinced that noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good.

It has been my conviction ever since reading Rauschenbusch that any religion that professes concern for the souls of men and is not equally concerned about the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strangle them, and the social conditions that cripple them is a spiritually moribund religion only waiting for the day to be buried. It well has been said: “A religion that ends with the individual, ends.”

Constructive ends can never give absolute moral justification to destructive means, because in the final analysis the end is preexistent in the means.

capitalism is always in danger of inspiring men to be more concerned about making a living than making a life. We are prone to judge success by the index of our salaries or the size of our automobiles, rather than by the quality of our service and relationship to humanity.

The Kingdom of God is neither the thesis of individual enterprise nor the antithesis of collective enterprise, but a synthesis which reconciles the truths of both.

Reason, devoid of the purifying power of faith, can never free itself from distortions and rationalizations.

My study of Gandhi convinced me that true pacifism is not nonresistance to evil, but nonviolent resistance to evil.

True pacifism is not unrealistic submission to evil power, as 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.

Ultimately, a genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.