Nonviolence or nonexistence

There are certain things in our nation and in the world
which I am proud to be maladjusted
and which I hope all men of good-will will be maladjusted
until the good societies realize —
I say very honestly that I never intend to become adjusted to —
segregation and discrimination. 

I never intend to become adjusted to religious bigotry.
I never intend to adjust myself to economic conditions
that will take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few. 

I never intend to adjust myself to the madness of militarism,
to self-defeating effects of physical violence. 

But in a day when sputniks and explorers are dashing through outer space
and guided ballistic missiles are carving highways of death through the stratosphere,
no nation can win a war. 

It is no longer the choice between violence and nonviolence.
It is either nonviolence or nonexistence…

Martin Luther King, Jr., Social Justice and the Emerging New Age
Western Michigan University, December 1963