The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be... The nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of choosing the type of extremism we embrace in society.
Martin Luther King Jr. suggests that every individual will adopt extreme beliefs or actions at some point. However, he stresses that it is crucial to deliberate on the nature of these extremisms, advocating for those that promote creativity and positive change, rather than destructive or negative extremism. This is especially relevant as the world grapples with various social challenges, highlighting a need for passionate and transformative leadership.
In practice
In a speech about social justice, you might use this quote to encourage people to embrace positive change.
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.
Vice is a monster of so frightful mien As to be hated needs but to be seen; Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face, We first endure, then pity, then embrace.
There is no mode of action, no form of emotion, that we do not share with the lower animals. It is only by language that we rise above them.
If I tell you that I would be disobeying the god and on that account it is impossible for me to keep quiet, you won't be persuaded by me, taking it that I am ionizing. And if I tell you that it is the greatest good for a human being to have discussions every day about virtue and the other things you hear me talking about, examining myself and others, and that the unexamined life is not livable for a human being, you will be even less persuaded.
Africa has become the big game of the nation hunters. Today, Africa looms as the greatest commercial, industrial and political prize in the world.
To the philosophers of India, however, Relativity is no new discovery, just as the concept of light years is no matter for astonishment to people used to thinking of time in millions of kalpas, (A kalpa is about 4,320,000 years). The fact that the wise men of India have not been concerned with technological applications of this knowledge arises from the circumstance that technology is but one of innumerable ways of applying it.
Well, the truth is, if you really listen to that bird on your shoulder, if you accept that you can die at any timeβthen you might not be as ambitious as you are.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.