I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice.
Peace is not simply the absence of warfare.
Most people think of peace as a state of Nothing Bad Happening, or Nothing Much Happening. Yet if peace is to overtake us and make us the gift of serenity and well-being, it will have to be the state of Something Good Happening.
Peace is not just the absence of mass destruction, but a positive internal and external condition in which people are free so that they can grow to their full potential.
I believe that peace is not merely an absence of war but the nurture of human life, and that in time this nurture would do away with war as a natural process.
Peace is not a passive but an active condition, not a negation but an affirmation.
We must concentrate not merely on the negative expulsion of war but the postive affirmation of peace.
I believe that hope for the future depends on each of us taking nonviolence into our hearts and minds and developing new and imaginative structures which are nonviolent and life-giving for all.
Let's get rid of the suffering and bring real peace, which is not just the absence of war, but the absence of all negativity.
As we live our truths, we will communicate across all barriers, speaking for the sources of peace. Peace that is not lack of war, but fierce and positive.
