Force Quotes

The more I study the world, the more I am convinced of the inability of brute force to create anything durable.

Strong coffee, much strong coffee, is what awakens me. Coffee gives me warmth, waking, an unusual force and a pain that is not without very great pleasure.

The question immediately presented in our Far Eastern affairs is whether the United States is or is not to stand by while Japan goes forward with a program of conquest by force in eastern Asia and the western Pacific.

Against naked force the only possible defense is naked force. The aggressor makes the rules for such a war; the defenders have no alternative but matching destruction with more destruction, slaughter with greater slaughter.

Books can not be killed by fire... No man and no force can abolish memory... In this war, we know, books are weapons. And it is a part of your dedication always to make them weapons for man's freedom.

Physical strength can never permanently withstand the impact of spiritual force.

No problem is so deep that it cannot be overcome, given the will of all parties, through discussion and negotiation rather than force and violence.

A government which uses force to maintain its rule teaches the oppressed to use force to oppose it.

Force is the only language the imperialists can hear, and no country became free without some sort of violence.

Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into friend.

In the days of slavery, this suppression was openly, scientifically and consistently applied. Sheer physical force kept the Negro captive at every point. He was prevented from learning to read and write, prevented by laws actually inscribed in the statute books.

Whenever the church, consciously or unconsciously, caters to one class it loses the spiritual force of the "whoso-ever will, let him come" doctrine, and is in danger of becoming little more than a social club with a thin veneer of religiosity.

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

Nonviolent action, the Negro saw, was the way to supplement, not replace, the progress of change. It was the way to divest himself of passivity without arraying himself in vindictive force.

Love is the greatest force in the universe. It is the heartbeat of the moral cosmos. He who loves is a participant in the being of God.

As my sufferings mounted I soon realized that there were two ways in which I could respond to my situation - either to react with bitterness or seek to transform the suffering into a creative force. I decided to follow the latter course.

We are moving up a mighty highway toward the city of Freedom. There will be meandering points. There will be curves and difficult moments, and we will be tempted to retaliate with the same kind of force that the opposition will use. But I'm going to say to you, 'Wait a minute, Birmingham. Somebody's got to have some sense in Birmingham.

It comes to us from the long Christian tradition, Jesus of Nazareth himself, coming down through Mahatma Gandhi of India, who took the love ethic of Jesus Christ and made it effective as a sociopolitical force and brought about the transformation of a great nation and achieved freedom for his people.

We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.

We have come to the point where we are able to say to those who will even use violence to block us, we will match you capacity to inflict suffering with our capacity to endure suffering. We will meet you physical force with soul force.