Quotes from the essay, Letter from Birmingham Jail
You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which as constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue.
It is a historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture, but as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to be immoral than individuals.
"An unjust law is no law at all"
- St. Augustine
"An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust"
- St. Thomas Aquinas
An unjust law is a code that a numerical or power majority group compels a minority group to obey bust does not make it binding on itself...This is difference made illegal.
Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.
Actually, we who engage in nonvoilent direct action are not creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion, before it can be cured.
More and more I feel that people of ill will have used time more effectively than people of good will
"The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason"
- T.S. Eliot
You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which as constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue.
It is a historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture, but as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to be immoral than individuals.
"An unjust law is no law at all"
- St. Augustine
"An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust"
- St. Thomas Aquinas
An unjust law is a code that a numerical or power majority group compels a minority group to obey bust does not make it binding on itself...This is difference made illegal.
Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.
Actually, we who engage in nonvoilent direct action are not creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion, before it can be cured.
More and more I feel that people of ill will have used time more effectively than people of good will
"The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason"
- T.S. Eliot
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