believe me good will come

I’m concerned about a better world. I’m concerned about justice; I’m concerned about brotherhood; I’m concerned about truth. And when one is concerned about that, he can never advocate violence. For through violence you may murder a murderer, but you can’t murder murder. Through violence you may murder a liar, buy you can’t establish truth. Through violence you may murder a hater, but you can’t murder hate through violence. Darkness cannot put out darkness; only light can do that.
– “Where Do We Go From Here?”, speech delivered at the eleventh annual convention of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Atlanta, Georgia, 16 August 1967.

Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction. So when Jesus says “Love your enemies”, he is setting forth a profound and ultimately inescapable admonition.
– Strength to Love, ‘Loving Your Enemies’, II.

[We] should love our enemies [because] love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend. We never get rid of an enemy by meeting hate with hate; we get rid of an enemy by getting rid of enmity. By its very nature, hate destroys and tears down; by its very nature, love creates and builds up. Love transforms with redemptive power.
– Strength to Love, ‘Loving Your Enemies’, II.

When in speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I’m not speaking of that force which is just emotional bosh. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life.
We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow down before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate.
– “Beyond Vietnam”, New York, 4 April 1967.

In a real sense, Waterloo symbolizes the doom of every Napoleon and is an eternal reminder to a generation drunk with military power that in the long run of history might does not make right and the power of the sword cannot conquer the power of the spirit.
– Strength to Love, ‘Our God Is Able’, II.

[Nonviolent resistance] is based on the conviction that the universe is on the side of justice. Consequently, the believer in nonviolence has deep faith in the future. This faith is another reason why the nonviolent resister can accept suffering without retaliation. For he knows that in his struggle for justice he has cosmic companionship.
– Stride Towards Freedom, ‘Pilgrimage to Nonviolence’.

Only through an inner spiritual transformation do we gain the strength to fight vigorously the evils of the world in a humble and loving spirit.
– Strength to Love, ‘Transformed Noncomformist’, II.

One will not be asked how many academic degrees he obtained or how much money he acquired, but how much he did for others. Did you feed the hungry? Did you give a cup of cold water to the thirsty? Did you clothe the naked? Did you visit the sick and minister to the imprisoned? These are the questions asked by the Lord of life. In a sense every day is judgement day, and we, through our deeds and words, our silence and speech, are constantly writing in the Book of Life.
Light has come into the world, and every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or the darkness of destructive selfishness. This is the judgement. Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, “What are you doing for others?”
– Strength to Love, ‘Three Dimensions of a Complete Life’, II.

Our nation’s productive machinery constantly brings forth such an abundance of food that we must build larger barns and spend more than a million dollars daily to store our surplus. Year after year we ask, “What shall I do, because I have no room where to bestow my fruits?” I have seen an answer in the faces of millions of poverty-stricken men and women in Asia, Africa, and South America. I have seen an answer in the appalling poverty in the Mississippi Delta and the tragic insecurity of the unemployed in large industrial cities of the North. What can we do? The answer is simple: feed the poor, cloth the naked, and heal the sick. Where can we store our goods? Again the answer is simple: We can store our surplus food free of charge in the shrivelled stomachs of the millions of God’s children who go to bed hungry at night. We can use our vast resources of wealth to wipe poverty from the earth.
– Strength to Love, ‘The Man Who Was a Fool’, II.

As Christians we must think not only about “mansions in the sky,” but also about the slums and ghettos that cripple the human soul, not merely about streets in heaven “flowing with milk and honey,” but also about the millions of people in this world who go to bed hungry at night. Any religion that professes concern regarding the souls of men and fails to be concerned by social conditions that corrupt and economic conditions that cripple the soul, is a do-nothing religion, in need of new blood. Such a religion fails to realise that man is an animal having physical and material needs.
– Strength to Love, ‘What is Man?’, I.

Nowhere is the tragic tendency to conform more evident than in the church, an institution which has often served to crystallize, conserve, and even bless the patterns of majority opinion. The erstwhile sanction by the church of slavery, racial segregation, war, and economic exploitation is testimony to the fact that the church has hearkened more to the authority of the world than to the authority of God. Called to be the moral guardian of the community, the church at times has preserved that which is immoral and unethical. Called to combat social evils, it has remained silent behind stained-glass windows. Called to lead men on the highway of brotherhood and to summon them to rise above the narrow confines of race and class, it has enunciated and practiced racial exclusiveness.
– Strength to Love, ‘Transformed Noncomformist’, II.

Gradually, however, the church became so entrenched in wealth and prestige that it began to dilute the strong demands of the gospel and to conform to the ways of the world. And ever since the church has been a weak and ineffectual trumpet making uncertain sounds. If the church of Jesus Christ is to regain once more its power, message, and authentic ring, it must conform only to the demands of the gospel.
– Strength to Love, ‘Transformed Noncomformist’, II.

Gandhi – Non-Violence in Peace and War

Mankind has to get out of violence only through non-violence. Hatred can be overcome only by love. Counter-hatred only increases the surface as well as the depth of hatred. II – 97

There is no escape for any of us save through truth and non-violence. I know that war is wrong, is an unmitigated evil. I know too that it has got to go. I firmly believe that freedom won through bloodshed or fraud is no freedom. I – 75

Non-violence is the supreme law. During my half-century of experience I have not yet come across a situation when I had to say that I was helpless, that I had no remedy in terms of non-violence. I – 172

I know this cannot be proved by argument. It shall be proved by persons living it in their lives with utter disregard of consequences to themselves. I – 122

The ideal of satyagraha is not meant for the select few – the saint and the seer only; it is meant for all. I – 34

To me it is a self-evident truth that if freedom is to be shared equally by all – even physically the weakest, the lame and the halt – they must able to contribute an equal share in it defense. How that can be possible when reliance is placed on armaments, my plebeian mind fails to understand. I therefore swear and shall continue to swear by non-violence, i.e., by satyagraha, or soul force. In it physical incapacity is no handicap, and even a frail woman or a child can pit herself or himself on equal terms against a giant armed with the most powerful weapons. II – 35

Without the recognition of non-violence on a national scale there is no such thing as a constitutional or democratic government. I – 199

I could not be leading a religious life unless I identified myself with the whole of mankind, and that I could not do unless I took part in politics. The whole gamut of man’s activities today constitutes an indivisible whole. You cannot divide social, economic, political and purely religious work into watertight compartments. I – 170
 
Just as one must learn the art of killing in the training for violence, so one must learn the art of dying in the training for non-violence. I – 335

You are no satyagrahis if you remain silent or passive spectators while your enemy is being done to death. You must protect him even at the cost of your own life. II – 63

The virtues of mercy, non-violence, love and truth in any man can be truly tested only when they are pitted against ruthlessness, violence, hate and untruth. II – 85

If one has pride and egoism, there is no non-violence. Non-violence is impossible without humility. My own experience is that whenever I have acted non-violently I have been led to it and sustained in it by the higher promptings of an unseen power. Through my own will I should have miserable failed. I – 187

Truth and non-violence are not possible without a living belief in God, meaning a self-existent, all-knowing, living Force which inheres in every other force known to the world and which depends on none, and which will live when all other forces may conceivably perish or cease to act. I am unable to account for my life without belief in this all-embracing living Light. II – 212

The root of satyagraha is in prayer. A satyagrahi relies upon God for protection against the tyranny of brute force. II – 62

My greatest weapon is my mute prayer. I – 251

My faith in the saying that what is gained by the sword will also be lost by the sword is imperishable. I – 211
 
Jesus was the most active resister known perhaps to history. This was non-violence par excellence. II – 16
 
If non-violence does not appeal to your heart, you should discard it. II – 134

– from Mohandas K. Gandhi, Non-Violence in Peace and War, 1948.

Whatever names we dignify ourselves with, whatever uniforms we wear, whatever priests we anoint ourselves before, however many millions we possess, however many guards are stationed along our road, however many policemen guard our wealth, however many so-called criminals, revolutionists, and anarchists we punish, whatever exploits we have performed, whatever states we may have founded, fortresses and towers we may have erected – from Babel to the Eiffel Tower – there are two inevitable conditions of life, confronting all of us, which destroy its whole meaning; (1) death, which may at any moment pounce upon each of us; and (2) the transitoriness of all our works, which so soon pass away and leave no trace.

Whatever we may do – found companies, build palaces and monuments, write songs and poems – it is all not for long time. Soon it passes away, leaving no trace. And therefore, however we may conceal it from ourselves, we cannot help seeing that the significance of our life cannot lie in our personal fleshly existence, the prey of incurable suffering and inevitable death, nor in any social institution or organization.

Whoever you may be who are reading these lines, think of your position and of your duties – not of your position as land-owner, merchant, judge, emperor, president, minister, priest, soldier, which has been temporarily allotted you by men, and not of the imaginary duties laid on you by those positions, but of your real positions in eternity as a creature who at the will of Someone has been called out of unconsciousness after an eternity of non-existence to which you may return at any moment at his will.

Think of your duties – not your supposed duties as a landowner to your estate, as a merchant to your business, as emperor, minister, or official to the state, but of your real duties, the duties that follow from your real position as being called into life and endowed with reason and love.

– Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God is Within You: Christianity Not as a Mystic Religion But as a New Theory of Life, XII.