The beauty of non-violence is that it is possible to fight war without violence, and it is possible to struggle for that which is right with love in one's heart.

Nonviolent passive resistance is effective as long as your opposition adheres to the same rules as you do. But if peaceful protest is met with violence, its efficacy is at an end. For me, nonviolence was not a moral principle but a strategy; there is no moral goodness in using an ineffective weapon.

He dared to exhort nonviolence in a time when the violence of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had exploded on us; he exhorted morality when science, technology and the capitalist order had made it redundant; he replaced self-interest with group interest without minimizing the importance of self. In fact, the interdependence of the social and the personal is at the heart of his philosophy. He seeks the simultaneous and interactive development of the moral person and the moral society.

Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time - the need for mankind to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to violence and oppression.

Nonviolence is not sterile passivity, but a powerful moral force which makes for social transformation.

It is my great hope that, as we struggle for racial justice, we will follow that philosophy and method of non-violent resistance, realizing that this is the approach that can bring about that better day of racial justice for everyone.