Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Nobel Peace Prize Lecture from Oslo, 11 Dec. 1964 (full audio)

mr. Jung mr. scowl and to all of the members of the Nobel Committee ladies and gentlemen it is impossible to begin this lecture without again expressing my deep appreciation to the Nobel Committee of the Norwegian Parliament for bestowing upon me and the civil rights movement in the United States such a great honor occasionally in life that of those moments of unutterable fulfillment which cannot completely be explained by those symbols called words their meaning can only be articulated by the inaudible language of the heart and such as the moment I am presently experiencing I experienced this high and joyous moment not for myself alone but for those devotees of non-violence who have moved so courageously against around pots of racial injustice and who in the process have acquired a new estimate of their own human worth many of them are young and cultured others are middle-aged and middle class the majority are poor and untutored but they are all united in the quiet conviction that it is better to suffer in dick then accept segregation in humiliation they are the real heroes of the freedom struggle they are the noble people for who might accept the Nobel Peace Prize I would like to say also that it is a habit experience and to know that so many friends who have worked closely with me over the last few years in this struggle were willing to go into their pocketbooks and their means and their humble financial situations and to come to Oslo to be a part of this experience and naturally it is a great pleasure and privilege to have my devoted wife my mother and father my sister and brother and among the many other friend my closest sociate one who has been the dearest friend to me in this struggle Ralph David Abernathy I would also like to say just a word about the many courtesies extended by the Norwegian people I have traveled in many lands and many places over the world but very seldom if ever have I found people more friendly than the people of Norway and we will long remember all of the courtesies extended and your great friendliness and I particularly want to thank the committee especially mr. John for the eloquent words that he uttered yesterday at the ceremony and yesterday evening at the banquet and I can assure you that all of these expressions of support of inestimable value for the continuance of my humble efforts and to make brotherhood freedom and justice realities in the United States of America this evening I would like to use this lofty and historic platform and to discuss what appears to me to be the most pressing problem confronting mankind today modern man has brought the whole world to an awe-inspiring threshold of the future he has reached new and astonishing peaks of scientific success he has produced machines that think and instruments appear into the unfathomable ranges of interstellar space he has built gigantic bridges to span the seas and gargantuan buildings to kiss the skies here's our planes and spaceships have dwarf distance placed time and chains and carved the highways through the stratosphere and this is a dazzling picture of modern man's scientific and technological progress yet in spite of these spectacular strides and science and technology and still unlimited ones to come something basic is missing and that is a sort of poverty of the spirit which stands in glaring contrast to our scientific and technological abundance the richer we have become materially the poorer we have become morally and spiritually we have learned to fly the air like the birds and swim the sea like fish but we have not learned the simple art of living together as brothers every man lives in two realms the internal and the external and the internal is that realm of spiritual ends expressed in art literature morals and religion the external is that complex of devices techniques mechanisms and instrumentalities by means of which we live our problem today is that we have allowed the internal to become lost in the external we have allowed the means by which we live to our distance the ends for which we live and so much of modern life can be summarized in that wresting dictum of the port the road improved means to an unimproved end this is a serious predicament the deep and haunting problem confronting modern man if we are to survive today our moral and spiritual lag must be eliminated enlarge material power spelled in large peril if that is not proportionate growth of the soul when the without of man's nature subjugates the within dog storm clouds began to form in the world and the problem of spiritual and moral lag which constitutes modern man's chief dilemma it's presses itself in three larger problems which grow out of man's ethical infantile ISM each of these problems while appearing to be separate and isolated is inextricably bound to the other I referred to racial injustice poverty and war the first problem that I would like to mention is racial injustice the struggle to eliminate the evil of racial injustice and constitutes one of the major struggles of our time in the present upsurge of the Negro people of the United States grows out of a deep and passionate determination to make freedom and equality a reality here and now in one sense the civil rights movement in the United States is a special American phenomenon which must be understood in the light of American history and dealt with in terms of the American situation but on another and more important level what is happening in the United States today is a relatively small part of a world development we live in a day says a philosopher Alfred North Whitehead when civilization is shifting its basic outlook a major turning point in history where the presuppositions on which society is structured are being analyzed sharply challenged and profoundly changed what we are seeing now is a freedom explosion the realization of an idea whose time has come to use Victor Hugo's phrase the deep rumbling of discontent that we hear today is a thunder of disinherited masses rising from dungeons of oppression to the bright heels of freedom in one majestic chorus the rising masses are singing in the words of our freedom song and gone let nobody turn us around all over the world like a fever the freedom movement is spreading in the widest liberation in history the great masses of people are determined to end the exploitation of their races and their lands they are awake and moving toward their goal like a tidal wave you can hear them rumbling in every village Street on the docks and the houses among the students in the churches and at political meetings historic movement was for several centuries and that of the nations and societies of Western Europe out into the rest of the world and conquests of various sorts that period the era of colonialism is at an end East is meeting West the earth is being redistributed yes we are shifting our basic outlooks now these developments should not surprise in a student of history oppressed people cannot remain remain oppressed forever the yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself and the Bible tells the thrilling story of how Moses stood in Pharaoh's caught centuries ago and cried let my people go this is a kind of opening chapter in a continuing story the present struggle in the United States is a later chapter in the same unfolding story something within has reminded the Negro of his birthright of freedom and something without has reminded him that it can be gained consciously unconsciously he has been caught up by the zeitgeist and with his black brothers of Africa and his brown and yellow brothers in Asia South America and the Caribbean the United States Negro is moving with a sense of great urgency toward the promised land of racial justice fortunately some significant strides have been made in the struggle to end a long night of racial injustice we have seen the Magnificent drama of Independence unfold in Asian in Africa just 30 years ago there are only three independent nations in the whole of Africa but today 35 African nations have risen from colonial bondage in the United States we have witnessed the gradual demise of the system of racial segregation the Supreme Court's decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public school gave a legal and constitutional deathblow to the whole doctrine of separate but equal the court decreed that separate facilities are inherently unequal and that the segregated child on the basis of his race is to deny that child equal protection of the law this decision came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of disinherited people then came that glowing day a few months ago when a strong civil rights bill became the law of the land this bill which was first recommended and promoted by President Kennedy was passed because of the overwhelming support and perseverance from millions of Americans Negro and white it came as a bright interlude in the long and sometimes turbulent struggle for civil rights the beginning of a second Emancipation Proclamation providing a comprehensive legal basis for equality of opportunity the sense of passage of this bill we have seen some encouraging and surprising signs of compliance I'm happy to report that by and large communities all over the southern part of the United States are obeying the civil rights law and showing remarkable good sense in the process another indication that progress is being made was found in the recent presidential election in the United States the American people revealed great maturity by overwhelmingly rejecting a presidential candidate who had become identified with extremism racism and retrogression the voters of our nation rendered a telling blow to Radek right they defeated those elements in our society which seek to pit quite against Negro and lead the nation down a dangerous fascist path now let me not leave you with a false impression the problem is far from solved we still have a long long way to go before the dream of freedom is a reality for the Negro in the United States to put it figuratively in biblical language we have left the dust assaults of Egypt and crossed a red sea whose waters had for years been hardened by long and piercing wintered of massive resistance but before we reach cement majestic shores of the promised land that is a frustrating and bewildering wilderness ahead we must still face prodigious hilltops of opposition and gigantic mountains of resistance but with patient and firm determination we will press on until every valley of despair is exalted to new peaks of hope until every mounting of pride and irrationality is made low by the leavening process of humility and compassion until the rough places of injustice are transformed into a small plain of equality and opportunity and until the crooked places of prejudice the transformed by the straightening process a bright-eyed wisdom what the main sections of the civil rights movement in the United States are saying is that the demand for dignity equality jobs and citizenship will not be abandoned or deluded or postponed if that means resistance and conflict we shall not flinch we shall not be cowed we are no longer afraid the word that symbolizes the spirit and the outward farmer of our encounter is non-violence and it is doubtless that factor which made it seem appropriate to award a peace prize to one identified with struggle broadly speaking non-violence in the civil rights struggle has meant not relying on arms and weapons for struggle it has meant non cooperation with customs and laws which are institutional aspects of a regime of discrimination and enslave enslavement it has meant direct participation of masses in protest rather than reliance on indirect methods which frequently do not involve masses in action at all non-violence has also meant that my people in the agonizing struggles of recent years have taken suffering upon themselves instead of inflicting it on others it has meant as I said that we are no longer afraid and card but in some substantial degree it has meant that we do not want to instill fear in others or into the society of which we are a part the movement does not seek to liberate Negroes at the expense of the humiliation and enslavement of whites it seeks no victory over anyone it seeks to liberate American society and to share in the self liberation of all the people violence as a way of achieving racial justice is I am convinced both impractical and immoral I'm not a mindful of the fact that violence often brings about momentary results nations have frequently won their independence in battle but in spite of temporary victories violence never brings permanent peace it solves no social problems it merely creates new and more complicated ones violence is impractical impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all it is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than when his understanding it seeks to annihilate rather than convert violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love it destroys community and makes Brotherhood impossible it leaves society and monologue rather than dialogue violence ends up defeating itself it creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality and the destroyers in a real sense non-violence seeks to redeem the spiritual and moral leg that I spoke of earlier as the chief dilemma of modern man it seeks to secure moral ends through moral means non-violence is a powerful and just weapon indeed it as a weapon unique in history which cuts without wounding and ennobles a man who wills it I believe in this method because I think it is the only way to reestablish the broken community it is a method which seeks to implement the just law by appealing to the conscience of the great decent majority who through blindness fear pride and irrationality have allowed their conscience is to sleep the nonviolent resistors can summarize a message in the following simple terms we will take direct action against injustice despite the failure of governmental and other official agencies to act first we will not obey unjust laws our submit to unjust practices we will do this peacefully openly cheerfully because our aim is to persuade we adopt the means of non-violence because our end is a community at peace with itself we will try to persuade with our words but if our words fail we will try to persuade with our acts we will always be willing to talk and seek fair compromise but we are ready to suffer when necessary and even risk our lives in order to become witnesses to truth as we see it this approach to the problem is not at all without successful precedent it was used in a magnificent way by Mohandas K Gandhi to challenge the might of the British Empire and free his people from the political domination an economic exploitation inflicted upon them for centuries he struggle only with the weapons of truth soul force non-injury and courage in the past ten years unarmed gallant men and women of the United States have given living testimony to the moral power and efficacy of non-violence by the thousands and faceless anonymous relentless young people black and white if temporary temporarily left the ivory tower walls of learning to stomp the barricades of bias they're courageous and discipline activities have come as a refreshing oasis in a desert sweltering with the heat of injustice they have taken our whole nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in the formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence one day all of America will be proud of that achievements I'm only too well aware of the human weaknesses and failures which exist the doubts about the efficacy of non-violence and the open advocacy of violence by some but I am still convinced that non-violence is both the most practically sound and morally excellent way to grapple with the age-old problem of racial injustice a second evil which plagues the modern world is that of poverty like a monstrous octopus it protects its nagging prehensile tentacles in lands and villages all over the world almost two-thirds of the peoples of the world go to bed hungry at night they are undernourished ill housed and shabbily clad many of them have no houses of beds to sleep in the only beds are the sidewalks of the cities and the dusty roads of the villages most of these poverty-stricken children of God have never seen a physician or a dentist this problem of poverty is not only seen in the class division between the highly in developed industrial nations and the so called underdeveloped nations it is seen in the great economic gaps within the rich nations themselves take my own country for example we have developed the greatest system of production that history has ever known we have become the richest nation in the world our national gross product this year will reach the astounding figure of almost six hundred and fifty billion dollars yet at least one-fifth of our fellow citizens some ten million families comprising about 40 million individuals are bound to a miserable culture of poverty in a sense of poverty of the poor in America is more frustrating than the poverty of Africa in Asia the misery of the poor in Africa in Asia is shared misery a fact of life for the vast majority they are all poor together as a result of years of exploitation and under development in sad contrast the poor in America know that they live in the richest nation in the world and that even though they are perishing on a lonely island of poverty they are surrounded by a vast ocean of material prosperity glistening towers of glass and steel easily seen from their slum dwellers spring up almost overnight jetliner speed over their get holes at six hundred miles an hour satellites streaked through outer space and reveal details of the moon President Johnson in his State of the Union message emphasizing entré diction and he heralded the United States highest standard of living in the world and deplored that it was accompanied by dislocation loss of jobs and the specter of poverty in the midst of Plenty so it is obvious that if man is to redeem his spiritual and moral AG he must go all out to brids of social and economic gulf between the haves and the have-nots of the world poverty is one of the most urgent items on the agenda of modern life that is nothing new about poverty what is new however is that we have the resources to get rid of it more than a century and a half ago people began to be disturbed about the twin problems of population and production a thoughtful Englishman named Malthus wrote a book that set forth some rather frightening conclusions he predicted that the human family was gradually moving toward global starvation because the world was producing people faster than it was producing food and material to support them later scientists however disproved the conclusions of Malthus and revealed that he had vastly underestimated the resources of the world and the resourcefulness of man not too many years ago dr. Kurt Li Mathur a Harvard geologist wrote a book entitled enough into spell he said for the basic theme that famine is wholly unnecessary in the modern world today therefore the question on the agenda must read Why should there be hunger and privation in any land in any city at any table when man has the resources and the scientific know-how to provide all mankind with the basic necessities of life even deserts can be irrigated and topsoil can be replaced we cannot complain of a lack of land for that of 25 million square miles of tillable land of which we are using less than seven million we have amazing knowledge of vitamins nutrition the chemistry of food and the versatility of atoms that is no deficit in human resources the deficit is in human will the well-off and the secure have to often become indifferent and oblivious to the poverty and deprivation in their midst the poor in our countries have been shut out of our minds and driven from the mainstream of our societies because we have allowed them to become invisible just as non-violence expose the ugliness of racial injustice so must the infection and sickness of poverty be exposed and heal not only its symptoms but its basic causes this too will be a fierce struggle and we must not be afraid to pursue the remedy no matter how formidable the task the time has come for an all-out war against poverty the rich nations must use their vast resources of wealth to develop the undeveloped school the unschool and feed the unfair ultimately a great nation is a compassionate nation no individual a nation can be great if it does not have a concern for the least of these deeply etched in the fiber of our religious tradition is a conviction that men are made in the image of God and that they are souls of infinite metaphysical value the heirs of a legacy of dignity and worth if we feel this as a profound moral fact we cannot be content to see men hung to see men victimized with starvation and ill health when we have the means to help them the wealth of nations must go all out to bridge the gulf between the rich minority and the poor majority in the final analysis the rich must not ignore the poor because both rich and poor are tied together in a single garment of destiny all life is interrelated and all men are interdependent the agony of the poor diminishes our rich and the salvation of the poor enlarges our rich we are inevitably our brother's keeper because of the interrelated structured of reality John Donne interpreted this truth in graphic terms when he affirmed no man is an island entire of itself every man is a piece of the continent a part of the main if a cloud be washed away by the sea Europe is the less as well as if a promontory world as well as if a man order thy friends of thine ownself were any man's death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind and therefore never send to know For Whom the Bell Tolls it tolls for thee a third great evil confronted our world is that of war recent events have this vividly reminded us that nations are not reducing but rather increasing their Arsenal's of weapons of mass destruction the best brains and the highly developed nations of the world are devoted to military technology the proliferation of nuclear weapons has not been halted in spite of the limited test ban treaty on the contrary the dito nation of an atomic device by the first non-white non-western and so-called underdeveloped power namely the Chinese People's Republic opens new vistas of exposure of vast multitudes ahold of humanity to insidious terrorization by the ever-present threat of annihilation the fact that most of the time human beings put the truth about the nature and risk of the nuclear war out of their minds because it is too painful and therefore not acceptable does not alter the nature and risk of such a war the device of rejection may temporarily covered up anxiety but it does not bestow a peace of mind and emotional security so man's proneness to engage in war is still a fact but wisdom born of experience should tell us that Ward is obsolete there may have been a time when war served as a negative good by preventing the spread and growth of an evil force but the destructive power of modern weapons eliminates even the possibility that war may serve as a negative good if we assume that life is worth living and that man has a right to survive then we must find an alternative to war in a day when vehicles hurtle through outer space and guided ballistic missiles carve highways of death through the stratosphere no nation can claim victory in war the so called limited war will leave little more than a calamitous legacy of human suffering political turmoil and political disillusionment a world war god forbid will leave only smoldering ashes as a mute test a human race whose father led inexorably to ultimate death and so of modern man's can man continues to flirt unhesitatingly with war he will transform his earthly habitat into an infernal such as even the mind of Dante could not imagine therefore i adventure to suggest to all of you and all who hear and may eventually read these words that the philosophy and strategy of non-violence become immediately a subject for study and for serious experimentation in every field of human conflict by no means excluding the relations between nations it is after all nation-states which made war which have produced the weapons which threaten the survival of mankind and which are both genocidal and suicidal in character here also we have ancient habits to deal with vast structures of power indescribable complicated problems to solve but unless we abdicate our humanity altogether and succumb to fear and importance in the presence of the weapons we have ourselves created it is imperative and urgent to put an end to war and violence between nations as it is to put an end to racial injustice equality with whites will hardly solve the problems of either White's or Negroes if it means equality and a society under the spell of terror and a world doomed to extinction I do not wish to minimum minimize the complexities of the problems that need to be faced in achieving disarmament in peace but I think it is a fact that we shall not have the will the courage and the insight to deal with such matters unless in this field we are prepared to undergo a mental and spiritual re-evaluation a change of focus which will enable us to see that the things which seemed most real and powerful are indeed now unreal and have come under the sentence of death we need to make a supreme effort to generate the readiness indeed the eagerness to enter into the new world which is now possible the city which hath foundations whose builder and maker is God we will not build a peaceful world by following a negative path it is not enough to say we must not wage war it is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it we must concentrate not merely on the negative explosion of war but on the positive affirmation of peace and that is a fascinating little story that is preserved for us in Greek literature about Ulysses and the sirens the sirens had the ability to sing so sweetly that sailors could not resist steering toward their Island many ships were lured upon the rocks and men forgot home duty and honor as they flung themselves into the sea to become embrace bombs that drew them down to death Ulysses determined not to be lured by the sirens first decided to tie himself tightly to the mast of his boat and it's in his crew stuff that years with wax but finally he and his crew learned a better way to save themselves they took on board the beautiful singer obvious whose melodies were sweeter than the music of the sirens when Orpheus sang who bothered to listen to the sirens so we must fix our visions not merely on the negative expulsion of war but upon the positive affirmation of peace we must see that piece represents a sweeter music a cosmic melody that is far superior to the discards of war somehow we must transform the dynamics of the world power struggle from the negative nuclear arms race which no one can win through a positive contest to harness man's creative genius for the purpose of making peace and prosperity a reality for all of the nations of the world in short we must shift the arms race into a peace race if we have the will and determination to mount such a peace offensive we will unlock hither do hitherto sealed doors of hope and transform our eminent cosmic elegy into a psalm of creative fulfillment all that I have said boils down to the point of affirming that mankind's survival is dependent upon man's ability to solve the problems of racial injustice poverty and war the solution of these problems is in turn dependent upon men squaring his moral progress with his scientific progress and learning the practical art of living in harmony some years ago two novelist died among his papers was found a list of suggested story plots for further stories the most prominently underscored being this one a widely separated family inherits a house in which they have to live together this is a great new problem of mankind we have inherited a big house a great world house in which we have to live together black men and white men Easterners and Westerners Gentiles and Jews Catholics and Protestants Muslims and Hindus a family unduly separated in ideas culture and interests who because we can never again live without each other must learn somehow in this one big world house to live with each other and this is our great this means that more and more our loyalty's must become ecumenical rather than sectional we must now give an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in our individual societies this call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts let neighborly concern beyond one's tribe race class and nation is in reality a call for all embracing and unconditional love for all men this off misunderstood and misinterpreted concept so readily dismissed by the niches of the world as a weak and cowardly force has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man when I speak of love I'm not speaking of some sentimental and weak response which is little more than emotional Bosh I'm speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as a supreme unifying principle of life love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality this Hindu Muslim Christian Jewish Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the First Epistle of st. John let us love one another for love is of God and every one that loveth is born of God and knoweth God he that loveth not knoweth not God for god is love if we love one another god dwelleth in US and his love is perfected in us let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day as arnold toynbee says love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice of life and good against a damning choice of death and evil therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word we can no longer afford to worship the god of hate bow before the altars of retaliation the oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever rising tides of hate and history is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate love is a key to the solution of the problem of the world let me close by saying that I have the personal faith and mankind will somehow rise up to the occasion and give new directions to an age drifting rapidly and toward its doom in spite of the tensions and uncertainties of this period something profoundly meaningful is taking place old systems of exploitation and oppression of passing away and out of the wombs of the frail of a frail world new systems of justice and equality of being born doors of opportunity are gradually being open to those at the bottom of society the shirtless and barefoot people of the land are developing a new sense of somebody nests and carving a tunnel of Hope through the dark mounting of despair the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light here and that an individual or group dance to love and rise us to the majestic heights of moral maturity and so in a real sense this is a great time to be alive therefore I am not yet discouraged about the future granted that the easygoing optimism of yesterday is impossible granted that those who pioneer in the struggle for peace and freedom will still face uncomfortable jail sales painful threats of death they will still be battered by the storms of persecution leading them to the nagging feeling at times that they can no longer bear such a heavy burden the temptation of wanting to retreat to a more quiet and serene life granted that we face a world crisis which leaves us standing so often amid the surging moment of life's Restless sea but every crisis has both its dangers and its opportunities it can spell either salvation or doom in a dark confused world the kingdom of God may yet reign in the hearts of men and we will come to that great and glad day when men all over the world will be able to join hands black men and white men Jews and Gentiles Protestants and Catholics Hindus and Muslims and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual free at last free at last thank God Almighty we are free at last you

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Keywords: martin luther king, martin luther king jr, nobel lecture, nobel peace prize 1964, nobel peace prize, mlk, mlkday

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Length: 52min 43sec (3163 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 20 2016