Nonviolent action on behalf of justice is no automatic forumla with promise of success: but neither is war. After all, at least half of the people who go to war for some cause deemed worthy of it are defeated.

John Howard Yoder
About This Quote

Martin Luther King jr. was a rebel himself. He wasn't afraid to get into a fight for his beliefs and stand up for what he believed in. However, his war was not a physical battle with armies going to war, rather it was a spiritual battle, a war against the evils of racism and segregation.

He wanted the world to see the evils of racism and segregation and he wasn't going to go down without a fight. Sadly, many people thought that if King didn't have a physical war then he should have been prepared to accept defeat. In other words, if he had been willing to go along with the system then he shouldn't have fought at all.

In other words, he shouldn't have been violent at all, but instead should have accepted the system as it was and let it do what it wanted without protest. Well, is that really how things work? No matter how much you may try to conform, you must never lose your soul or else you will end up like those who are defeated in war.

Source: When War Is Unjust: Being Honest In Justwar Thinking

Some Similar Quotes
  1. The acceptance of oneself is the essence of the whole moral problem and the epitome of a whole outlook on life. That I feed the hungry, that I forgive an insult, that I love my enemy in the name of Christ -- all these are... - C.g. Jung
  2. Do you know what hurts so very much? It's love. Love is the strongest force in the world, and when it is blocked that means pain. There are two things we can do when this happens. We can kill that love so that it stops... - Corrie Ten Boom
  3. When you have reached the point where you no longer expect a response, you will at last be able to give in such a way that the other is able to receive, and be grateful. When Love has matured and, through a dissolution of the... - Unknown
  4. Love is larger than the walls which shut it in. - Corrie Ten Boom
  5. I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now... Come further up, come further in! - C.s. Lewis
More Quotes By John Howard Yoder
  1. Nonviolent action on behalf of justice is no automatic forumla with promise of success: but neither is war. After all, at least half of the people who go to war for some cause deemed worthy of it are defeated.
  2. If the tradition which claims that war may be justified does not also admit that it could be unjustified, the affirmation is not morally serious. A Christian who prepares the case for a justified war without being equally prepared for hte negative case has not...
  3. We use the word cross in our hymns, in our piety, in our prayers, and in our pastoral language. But we use it too cheaply. We say that a person has to live with some sort of suffering in life: a sickness that cannot be...
Related Topics