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Nonviolence or Nonexistence
Audio/Video Text
"Today there is no longer a choice between violence and
nonviolence. It is either nonviolence or nonexistence. I feel that we've
got to look at this total thing anew and recognize that we must live
together. That the whole world now it is one--not only geographically but
it has to become one in terms of brotherly concern. Whether we live in
America or Asia or Africa we are all tied in a single garment of destiny
and whatever effects one directly, effects one in-directly.
"I'm concerned about living with my conscience and searching for that
which is right and that which is true, and I cannot live with the idea of
being just a conformist following a path that everybody else follows. And
this has happened to us. As I've said in one of my books, so often we live
by the philosophy 'Everybody's doing it, it must be alright.' We
tend to determine what is right and wrong by taking a sort of Gallup poll
of the majority opinion, and I don't think this is the way to get at what
is right.
"Arnold Toynbee talks about the creative minority and I think more and
more we must have in our world that creative minority that will take a
stand for that which conscience tells them is right, even though it brings
about criticism and misunderstanding and even abuse."
Excerpted from a 1967 interview of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. by
Arnold Michaelis.
The University of Georgia and The Martin Luther King, Jr. Center
for Nonviolent Social Change, Inc. (c) Estate of Martin Luther King, Jr.,
Mrs. Coretta Scott King, and Arnold Michaelis
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