Source: Moral Man and Immoral Society (1932), pp. 8-9
Context: The inevitable hypocrisy, which is associated with the all the collective activities of the human race, springs chiefly from this source: that individuals have a moral code which makes the actions of collective man an outrage to their conscience. They therefore invent romantic and moral interpretations of the real facts, preferring to obscure rather than reveal the true character of their collective behavior. Sometimes they are as anxious to offer moral justifications for the brutalities from which they suffer as for those which they commit. The fact that the hypocrisy of man's group behavior... expresses itself not only in terms of self-justification but in terms of moral justification of human behavior in general, symbolizes one of the tragedies of the human spirit: its inability to conform its collective life to its individual ideals. As individuals, men believe they ought to love and serve each other and establish justice between each other. As racial, economic and national groups they take for themselves, whatever their power can command.
Source: Understanding Capitalism: Competition, Command, and Change, 2005, p. 54
Source: Tristes Tropiques (1955), Chapter 16 : Markets p. 149
In reference to the Alabama Council on Human Relations, an organization which was joined by King, whose church's meeting room was used to hold monthly meetings for the Montgomery chapter the council. Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story (1958)
1950s
Context: Although the Montgomery council never had a large membership, it played an important role. As the only truly interracial group in Montgomery, it served to keep the desperately needed channels of communication open between the races.
Men often hate each other because they fear each other; they fear each other because they don't know each other; they don't know each other because they can not communicate; they can not communicate because they are separated. In providing an avenue of communication, the council was fulfilling a necessary condition for better race relations in the South.
Justice in War-Time (1916), p. 70
1910s
“Each people can do justice to itself only if it does justice to others”
1910s, The World Movement (1910)
Context: Each people can do justice to itself only if it does justice to others; but each people can do its part in the world movement for all only if it first does its duty within its own household. The good citizen must be a good citizen of his own country first before he can with advantage be a citizen of the world at large.
“The difference between friendship and love is how much you can hurt each other.”
Raise their children honorably, lovingly and with detachment. A child is a guest in the house, to be loved and respected — never possessed, since he belongs to God. How wonderful, how sane, how beautifully difficult, and therefore true. The joy of responsibility for the first time in my life.
Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction (1963), Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters (1955)
Tout le genre humain n’est qu’une famille dispersée sur la face de toute la terre. Tous les peuples sont frères, et doivent s’aimer comme tels.
Bk. 9, p. 67; translation p. 162.
Les aventures de Télémaque (1699)
Source: Humanity Comes of Age, A study of Individual and World Fulfillment (1950), Introduction p. I - XII
