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Home  »  Respectfully Quoted  »  Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–68)

Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations. 1989.

 
NUMBER: 1894
AUTHOR: Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–68)
QUOTATION: I feel that we will continue to have a non-violent movement, and we will continue to find the vast majority of Negroes committed to non-violence, at least as the best tactical approach and from a pragmatic point of view as the best strategy in dealing with the problem of racial injustice. Realism impels me to admit, however, that when there is justice and the pursuit of justice, violence appears, and where there is injustice and frustration, the potentialities for violence are greater, and I would like to strongly stress the point that the more we can achieve victories through non-violence, the more it will be possible to keep the non-violent discipline at the center of the movement. But the more we find individuals facing conditions of frustration, conditions of disappointment and seething despair as a result of the slow pace of things and the failure to change conditions, the more it will be possible for the apostles of violence to interfere.
ATTRIBUTION: MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR., televised interview, “Meet the Press,” March 28, 1965.—Transcript, p. 9.
SUBJECTS: Violence