Quotes from “An Experiment In Love” – a sermon by Martin Luther King Jr

To meet hate with retaliatory hate would do nothing but intensify the

existence of evil in the universe. Hate begets hate; violence begets

violence; toughness begets a greater toughness. We must meet the forces of

hate with the power of love; we must meet physical force with soul force.

Our aim must never be to defeat or humiliate the white man, but to win his

friendship…

[Another] characteristic of the nonviolent method is that the attack is

directed against forces of evil rather than against persons who happen to be

doing the evil. The tension is, at bottom, between justice and injustice,

between the forces of light and the forces of darkness… We are out to defeat

injustice and not white persons who may be unjust…

The nonviolent resister not only refuses to shoot his opponent but he also

refuses to hate him. At the center of nonviolence stands the principle of

love. To retaliate in kind would do nothing but intensify the existence of

hate in the universe. Along the way of life, someone must have sense

enough and morality enough to cut off the chain of hate. This can only be

done by projecting the ethic of love to the center of our lives…

-Martin Luther King Jr., An Experiment in Love, 1958