Quotes About Compassion

I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that." ? Martin Luther King Jr., A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches

God] seeks us in dark places and suffers with us in our tragic prodigality.

Ultimately a great nation is a compassionate nation. No individual or nation can be great if it does not have a concern for the least of these.

Todo hombre debe decidir si caminará a la luz del altruismo creativo o en la oscuridad del egoísmo destructivo. Éste es el juicio. La pregunta más urgente, e ineludible, de la vida es: ¿Qué estás haciendo por los demás?

True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it understands that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth.

Jesus eloquently affirmed from the cross a higher law. He knew that the old eye-for-an-eye philosophy would leave everyone blind. He did not seek to overcome evil with evil. He overcame evil with good. Although crucified by hate, he responded with aggressive love.

Nonviolence, the answer to the Negroes' need, may become the answer to the most desperate need of all humanity.

Never, never be afraid to do what's right, especially if the wellbeing of a person or animal is at stake.

Creo que la verdad desarmada y el amor incondicional tendrán la palabra final en la realidad.

We must recognize that Jesus was nailed to the cross not simply by sin but also by blindness. The men who cried, "Crucify him," were not bad men but rather blind men. The jeering mob that lined the roadside which led to Calvary was composed not of evil people but of blind people. They knew not what they did. What a tragedy!

Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that

We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society.

if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we … must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin … the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society.

Yes we have learned to fly the air like birds, we've learned to swim the seas like fish, and yet we have not learned the simple art of walking the earth as brothers and sisters.

Life's most urgent question is: What are you doing for others?

The hardhearted individual never sees people as people, but rather as mere objects or as impersonal cogs in an ever-turning wheel. In the vast wheel of industry, he sees men as hands … He depersonalizes life.

Like life, racial understanding is not something that we find but something that we must create.

A religion that professes a concern for the souls of men and is not equally concerned about the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strangle them and the social conditions that cripple them , is a spiritually moribund religion

Through our scientific genius, we have made of this world a neighborhood; now through our moral and spiritual development, we must make of it a brotherhood. In a real sense, we must all learn to live together as brothers or we will all perish together as fools. We must come to see that no individual can live alone. We must all live together; we must all be concerned about each other.

On the one hand we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.

Any religion that professes to be concerned with the souls of men and is not concerned with the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strange them, and the social conditions that cripple them is a dry-as-dust religion.

Man's inhumanity to man is not only perpetrated by the vitriolic actions of those who are bad. It is also perpetrated by the vitiating inaction of those who are good.

I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action.