I could never adjust to the separate waiting rooms, separate eating places, separate rest rooms, partly because the separate was always unequal, and partly because the very idea of separation did something to my sense of dignity and self-respect.
Interpretation
The quote expresses the injustice of segregation and its impact on personal dignity and self-respect.
In this quote, Martin Luther King, Jr. reflects on his inability to accept the practice of segregation, highlighting that the divisions created by society were not only unjust but also detrimental to one's sense of dignity. He argues that segregation is not merely a physical separation but an affront to human dignity and self-worth, emphasizing the deep psychological effects of such inequality on individuals.
In practice
This quote can be used in a discussion about civil rights movements.
This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love.
Music is the best consolation for a despaired man
We must meet the forces of hate with the power of love.
We may have all come on different ships, but we're in the same boat now.
Israel... is one of the great outpost of democracy in the world
One of the greatest casualties of the war in Vietnam is the Great Society... shot down on the battlefield of Vietnam.
Like our attitude to love, truth and goodness, we seem to be confident about knowing what beauty is - certain, even dogmatic - until we think hard about the idea, whereupon all confidence flies away.
Doing nothing for others is the undoing of ourselves.
Our responsibility is much greater than we might have supposed, because it involves all mankind.
If someone irritates you, it is only your own response that is irritating you. Therefore, when anyone seems to be provoking you, remember that it is only your judgment of the incident that provokes you. -
The one charm about the past is that it is the past. But women never know when the curtain has fallen.
This world in which we live needs beauty in order not to sink into despair. It is beauty, like truth, which brings joy to the heart of man and is that precious fruit which resists the year and tear of time, which unites generations and makes them share things in admiration.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.