“The greatest purveyor of violence in the world : My own Government, I can not be Silent.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.
It happens every year on Martin Luther King Jr. day, and it’s happening right now.
Well-meaning people share his more palatable, more agreeable statements while avoiding the simple fact that MLK held very radical views throughout his life, and those views are just as applicable today.
Here are a few of our favorites…
“A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”
—A Time to Break the Silence: April 4, 1967
“The evils of capitalism are as real as the evils of militarism and racism. The problems of racial injustice and economic injustice cannot be solved without a radical redistribution of political and economic power”.
—King to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) board on March 30, 1967.
“…the price that America must pay for the continued oppression of the Negro and other minority groups is the price of its own destruction.”
—The American Dream: July 4, 1965
“White Americans must recognize that justice for black people cannot be achieved without radical changes in the structure of our society.”
—Where Do We Go from Here? 1967
“Whites, it must frankly be said, are not putting in a similar mass effort to reeducate themselves out of their racial ignorance. It is an aspect of their sense of superiority that the white people of America believe they have so little to learn. The reality of substantial investment to assist Negroes into the twentieth century, adjusting to Negro neighbors and genuine school integration, is still a nightmare for all too many white Americans…These are the deepest causes for contemporary abrasions between the races. Loose and easy language about equality, resonant resolutions about brotherhood fall pleasantly on the ear, but for the Negro there is a credibility gap he cannot overlook. He remembers that with each modest advance the white population promptly raises the argument that the Negro has come far enough. Each step forward accents an ever-present tendency to backlash.”
— Where Do We Go From Here: 1967
“We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”
—Letter from a Birmingham Jail, 1963
“Again we have deluded ourselves into believing the myth that capitalism grew and prospered out of the Protestant ethic of hard work and sacrifices. Capitalism was built on the exploitation of black slaves and continues to thrive on the exploitation of the poor, both black and white, both here and abroad.”
—The Three Evils speech, 1967
“The test of a progressive policy is not private but public, not just rising income and consumption for individuals, but widening the opportunities and what Amartya Sen calls the 'capabilities' of all through collective action. But that means, it must mean, public non-profit initiative, even if only in redistributing private accumulation. Public decisions aimed at collective social improvement from which all human lives should gain. That is the basis of progressive policy—not maximising economic growth and personal incomes. Nowhere will this be more important than in tackling the greatest problem facing us this century, the environmental crisis. Whatever ideological logo we choose for it, it will mean a major shift away from the free market and towards public action, a bigger shift than the British government has yet envisaged. And, given the acuteness of the economic crisis, probably a fairly rapid shift. Time is not on our side.”
― Eric Hobsbawm
"Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone."
- John Maynard Keynes.
Herald: We only show these evil massacres because this indisputably occurred. Please, calmly watch these barbarous displays, which could not happen nowadays. The men of that time, mostly now demised, were primitive; we are more civilized.
- Marat/Sade
"The key is to keep company only with people who uplift you, whose presence calls forth your best." - Epictetus
“There are people who are generic. They make generic responses and they expect generic answers. They live inside a box and they think people who don't fit into their box are weird. But I'll tell you what, generic people are the weird people. They are like genetically-manipulated plants growing inside a laboratory, like indistinguishable faces, like droids. Like ignorance.”
― C. JoyBell C.
“Life is a journey. Time is a river. The door is ajar”
― Jim Butcher, Dead Beat
“Wise men don’t judge – they seek to understand.” –Wei Wu Wei
“Dogs do speak, but only to those who know how to listen.”
― Orhan Pamuk, My Name Is Red
"It is difficult to get the news from poetry, yet men die miserably every day
for lack of what is found there." (William Carlos Williams)
@edgarblythe,
“Marriage is a great institution, but I'm not ready for an institution.”
Mae West
“If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.”
― George Bernard Shaw, Immaturity
"You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.
Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
’Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.
Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still, I'll rise.
Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries?
Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
’Cause I laugh like I've got
gold mines
Diggin’ in my own backyard.
You may shoot me with
your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with
your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.
Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've
got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?
Out of the huts of history’s
shame,
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted
in pain,
I rise
I'm a black ocean,
leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling
I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights
of terror and fear,
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s
wondrously clear,
I rise
Bringing the gifts that
my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope
of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise."
☀️ Maya Angelou, Still I Rise
Democracies may die at the hands not of generals but at the hands of the elected leaders--presidents or prime ministers who subvert the very process that brought them to power.
Excerpted from : How Democracies Die, by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt
“War is war and Hell is hell, and if you ask me, War is a lot worse.”
― Alan Alda
“I'm for truth, no matter who tells it. I'm for justice, no matter who it is for or against. I'm a human being, first and foremost, and as such I'm for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.”
Malcolm X
"If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you." -Attr. to Oscar Wilde
The sun is handing you free energy every sunny day of the year, and to just let it go to waste while we are burning fossil fuels, warming the Earth, is a travesty. So we need to use our brain power in ways that will represent us as good shepherds of the Earth so that generations to come will be proud of what we have done instead of ashamed.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
