War Is Not The Answer...

Copyright © The Nobel Foundation

Martin Luther King, Jr.
"Beyond Vietnam"
Address delivered to the Clergy and Laymen
Concerned about Vietnam, at Riverside Church
4 April 1967
New York City

Excerpts:

"A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."

"War is not the answer. Communism will never be defeated by the use of atomic bombs or nuclear weapons. Let us not join those who shout war and, through their misguided passions, urge the United States to relinquish its participation in the United Nations."

"We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate."

© The Estate of Martin Luther King, Jr.