A society is always eager to cover misdeeds with a cloak of forgetfulness, but no society can fully repress an ugly past when the ravages persist into the present. America owes a debt of justice which it has only begun to pay.
Interpretation
Society tends to ignore its historical wrongs, but the effects of those wrongs can linger and demand acknowledgment.
This quote by Martin Luther King, Jr. highlights the tendency of societies to mask or forget their misdeeds in order to move on. However, the consequences of past injustices remain alive and impactful in the present. King emphasizes that the ongoing struggles against systemic injustices mean that a society must confront and address its past wrongs rather than sweep them under the rug. He suggests that true justice requires acknowledging these ugly truths.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about the importance of historical awareness.
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.
Some false representations contravene the law; some do not. The law does not pretend to punish everything that is dishonest. That would seriously interfere with business, and, besides, could not be done. The line between honesty and dishonesty is a narrow, shifting one and usually lets those get by that are the most subtle and already have more than they can use.
My experience of living with people of diverse religions and cultures taught me that one will never be at peace with the other if one is at war with oneself.
But that's always the way; it don't make no difference whether you do right or wrong, a person's conscience ain't got no sense, and just goes for him anyway. If I had a yaller dog that didn't know no more than a person's conscience does I would pison him. It takes up more room than all the rest of a person's insides, and yet ain't no good, nohow.
Happy is the man who knows or even the man who remembers those silent vigils where silence itself was the sign of the communion of souls!
Nip the shoots of arbitrary power in the bud, is the only maxim which can ever preserve the liberties of any people.
To get overprotective about particular readings of the Bible is always in danger of idolatry.
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