There is a power in love that our world has not discovered yet. Jesus discovered it centuries ago. Mahatma Gandhi of India discovered it a few years ago, but most men and most women never discover it. For they believe in hitting for hitting; they believe in an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth; they believe in hating for hating; but Jesus comes to us and says, 'This isn't the way.'
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the transformative and powerful nature of love, which many people fail to recognize and embrace.
In this quote, Martin Luther King, Jr. highlights the profound and often overlooked power of love, suggesting that it is a force capable of bringing about significant change and understanding in the world. He contrasts this with the common human inclination to respond to negativity with more negativity, advocating for Jesus' teachings that emphasize love over retaliation and hatred, thereby calling for a more compassionate approach to conflict.
In practice
In a speech about social justice, one might use this quote to emphasize the importance of choosing love over hate.
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.
Love all God’s creation, both the whole and every grain of sand. Love every leaf, every ray of light. Love the animals, love the plants, love each separate thing. If thou love each thing thou wilt perceive the mystery of God in all; and when once thou perceive this, thou wilt thenceforward grow every day to a fuller understanding of it: until thou come at last to love the whole world with a love that will then be all-embracing and universal.
We don't love qualities; we love a person; sometimes by reason of their defects as well as their qualities.
If two people who love each other let a single instant wedge itself between them, it grows-it becomes a month, a year, a century; it becomes to late.
One can be very much in love with a woman without wishing to spend the rest of one's life with her.
She let him finish, scratching his head with the tips of her fingers, and without his having revealed that he was weeping from love, she recognized immediately the oldest sobs in the history of man.
At the beginning and at the end of love, the two lovers are embarrassed to find themselves alone.
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