“Now, power properly understood is nothing but the ability to achieve purpose. It is the strength required to bring about social, political, and economic change… What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and that love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power, at its best, is love implementing the demands of justice; and justice, at its best, is love correcting everything that stands against love.“
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
from Where Do We Go From Here?
Delivered 16 August 1967 at the SCLC Annual Convention in Atlanta Georgia.
Read the full text of this speech here.