Luther Quotes - page 2
You cannot hear the name Martin Luther King, Jr., and not think of death. You might hear the words 'I have a dream,' but they will doubtlessly only serve to underscore an image of a simple motel balcony, a large man made small, a pool of blood. For as famous as he may have been in life, it is - and was - death that ultimately defined him.
Michael Eric Dyson
Luther could not be ignorant of this mediaeval version. He made judicious use of it, as he did also of old German and Latin hymns. Without such aid he could hardly have finished his New Testament in the short space of three months. But this fact does not diminish his merit in the least; for his version was made from the original Hebrew and Greek, and was so far superior in every respect that the older version entirely disappeared. It is to all intents a new work.
Philip Schaff
The philosophy of nonviolence, which I learned from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., during my involvement in the civil rights movement was first responsible for my change in diet. I became a vegetarian in 1965. ... Under the leadership of Dr. King I became totally committed to nonviolence, and I was convinced that nonviolence meant opposition to killing in any form. I felt the commandment "Thou shalt not kill” applied to human beings not only in their dealings with each other-war, lynching, assassination, murder and the like-but in their practice of killing animals for food or sport. Animals and humans suffer and die alike. Violence causes the same pain, the same spilling of blood, the same stench of death, the same arrogant, cruel and brutal taking of life.
Dick Gregory
We've already said that it's the Holy Spirit who gives us the ultimate assurance of Christianity's truth. Therefore, the only role left for argument and evidence to play is a subsidiary role. I think Martin Luther correctly distinguished between what he called the magisterial and ministerial uses of reason. The magisterial use of reason occurs when reason stands over and above the gospel like a magistrate and judges it on the basis of argument and evidence. The ministerial use of reason occurs when reason submits to and serves the gospel... Should a conflict arise between the witness of the Holy Spirit to the fundamental truth of the Christian faith and beliefs based on argument and evidence, then it is the former which must take precedence over the latter, not vice versa.
William Lane Craig
The irony is that Barack Obama would not even be president if it were not for the courage of persecuted dissidents such as Martin Luther King or Malcolm X, spied upon by their own government. But Obama understands where power lies. It does not lie with the citizen. It lies with Wall Street and our corporate boardrooms, which have carried out a slow motion coup d'état. And a system of mass surveillance is designed to keep these elites in these boardrooms powerful and the rest of us powerless.
Chris Hedges
... [ Franklin D. Roosevelt, Lucy Stone, Martin Luther King Jr. ]... didn't let the ugliness and the obstacles deter them. They didn't just give up and retreat to the comfortable company of like-minded folks, because they understood that this is how democracy operates. It is loud and messy, and it's not particularly warm and fuzzy.
Michelle Obama
Central to the Smithian approach is our willingness to see critically what we observe around us. The sense of comfort that is often associated with being content with the world as it is can seriously hamper the pursuit of justice. This understanding goes strongly against a line of thought that was powerfully presented by Friedrich Nietzshe. ‘The Christian resolve to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad', said Nietzshe. I think I can, with some effort, understand what Nietzsche meant, but it is hard for me, even with a lot of effort, to see that Nietzshe's hypothesis helps us to understand the causation or resilience of the nastiness of the world in which we live. Nor, I must insist (this I do as a thoroughly unreligious person), does it offer any obvious insight into the lives and achievements of Martin Luther King, or Mother Theresa, or Desmond Tutu, who have tried to reduce injustice in the world and have done so with non-negligible success.
Amartya Sen
Howard Fineman: The people who don't pay their taxes on principle are heroic people, in the manner of Gandhi and Martin Luther King?
Ron Paul: I think if they're defending the constitution and they know what they're doing, and this money is supporting some real evil in the world. Preemptive war? That's pretty evil as far as I'm concerned. And so much waste in a system of government that has just overrun our liberties? Yes, I think that in many ways it's heroic for people willing to risk their freedom in order to defend what they believe is freedom.
Ron Paul
With the election behind us, our country turns hopeful eyes to the future. I have a few hopes of my own. I congratulate our first African-American president-elect. Martin Luther King, Jr. certainly would be proud to see this day. We are stronger for embracing diversity, and I am hopeful that we can continue working through the tensions and wrongs of the past and become a more just and colorblind society. I hope this new administration will help bring us together, and not further divide us. I have always found that freedom is the best way to break down barriers. A free society emphasizes the importance of individuals, and not because they are part of a certain group. That's the only way equal justice can be achieved.
Ron Paul
A mob of black demonstrators, led by the "Rev." Al Sharpton, occupied and closed the Statue of Liberty recently, demanding that New York be renamed Martin Luther King City 'to reclaim it for our people.'
Hmmm. I hate to agree with the Rev. Al, but maybe a name change is in order. Welfaria? Zooville? Rapetown? Dirtburg? Lazyopolis?
But Al, the Statue of Liberty? Next time, hold that demonstration at a food stamp bureau or a crack house.
Ron Paul
I was in Washington in the summer of 1963, [and] had the opportunity to participate in Dr. Martin Luther King's March on Washington, which culminated at the Lincoln memorial in his soaring 'I Have a Dream' speech. For me, this was America at its best. Hundreds of thousands of us, all religions, races, and nationalities, joined together peacefully but powerfully to petition our government to right the wrong of racial bigotry.
Joe Lieberman
The philosophical thought of Kant, the supreme flower of the Germanic people, has its roots in the religious feeling of Luther, and it is not possible for Kantism, especially the practical part of it, to take root and bring forth flower and fruit in peoples who have not undergone the experience of the Reformation and who perhaps were incapable of experiencing it. Kantism is Protestant, and we Spaniards are fundamentally Catholic. And if Krause struck some roots here - more numerous and more permanent than is commonly supposed - it is because Krause has roots in pietism, and pietism, as Ritschl has demonstrated in his Geschichte des Pietismus, has specifically Catholic roots and may be described as the irruption, or rather the persistence of Catholic mysticism in the heart of Protestant rationalism. And this explains why not a few Catholic thinkers in Spain became followers of Krause.
Miguel de Unamuno
Martin Luther King, Jr. once wrote that you cannot commit an act of violence against a non-sentient object. Back in 1986, the Green Party of Canada tried to toss me out of the Party for sinking whaling ships on the ground that it was a violent act. I pointed out that the Green Party of Canada supported violence when it was convenient politically - for example they supported and continue to support abortion which is, like it or not, a violent act, certainly more violent than sinking some metal into the sea. Violence is not violent when we justify it, be it abortion, or war, or eating meat for example. I support abortion but I'm not a hypocrite about it - it's violent, I accept that. Every American taxpayer accepts the violence that their tax-dollars fund.
Paul Watson
We know that these challenges can be overcome because history moves in the direction of justice. The evils of slavery were accepted and unchanged for centuries, yet eventually the human heart would not abide them. There is a voice of conscience and hope in every man and woman that will not be silenced, what Martin Luther King called a certain kind of fire that no water could put out. That flame could not be extinguished at the Birmingham jail. It could not be stamped out at Robben Island prison. It was seen in the darkness here at Goree Island, where no chain could bind the soul. This untamed fire of justice continues to burn in the affairs of man, and it lights the way before us. May God bless you all.
George W. Bush