Remembering Martin Luther King, Jr.

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day
Observed January 19, 2004

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is an opportunity to honor one of the most important peace heroes of our time. This is a time to renew one's commitment to nonviolence. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day offers a chance to scrutinize the violent spirit of war and weapons of mass destruction. It is also a time to consider what Martin Luther King Jr. has said about war, nuclear weapons, and the necessity of peace:

"Wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows…. We must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means."

"Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men."

"It is no longer a choice, my friends, between violence and nonviolence. It is either nonviolence or nonexistence. And the alternative to disarmament, the alternative to a greater suspension of nuclear tests, the alternative to strengthening the United Nations and thereby disarming the whole world, may well be a civilization plunged into the abyss of annihilation, and our earthly habitat would be transformed into an inferno that even the mind of Dante could not imagine."

"Through our scientific and technological genius, we have made of this world a neighborhood and yet we have not had the ethical commitment to make of it a brotherhood. But somehow, and in some way, we have got to do this. We must all learn to live together as brothers or we will all perish together as fools."

"I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of nuclear annihilation."