When any society says that I cannot marry a certain person, that society has cut off a segment of my freedom.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes that restrictions on whom one can marry limit personal freedom.
In this quote, Martin Luther King Jr. asserts that societal rules governing marriage restrict individual liberty, particularly when they prevent people from marrying whom they choose. He highlights the importance of love and partnership as fundamental human rights that should not be dictated by societal norms or prejudices, advocating for freedom in personal relationships.
In practice
In a speech advocating for marriage equality, this quote can highlight the need for societal 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.
We had people of all backgrounds coming together - all races, all creeds, all colors, all status in life. And coming together there was a kind of quiet dignity and a kind of sense of caring and a feeling of joint responsibility.
Sometimes when I'm with you, I remember things I lost when I was your age. Like I remember the sound of the rain and the smell of the wind.
Before, they had never found themselves broken together. Usually, it was one needing the other but not both needing each other, and so there had been a way, by touching, to borrow from the stronger one's strength.
How was she to tie herself to a man without permitting him to imprison her? And was there some means of acquiring things without those things possessing her?
I will never have a photograph of her to carry around in my pocket. I will never have a letter in her handwriting, or a scrap-book of everything we've done. I will never share an apartment with her in the city. I will never know if we are listening to the same song at the same time. We will not grow old together. I will not be the person she calls when she's in trouble. She will not be the person I call when I have stories to tell. I will never be able to keep anything she's given to me.
I'm struck these days by how often people come up to me and ask to take a photograph instead of shaking hands, meeting one's eyes, and having an actual conversation.
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