12 Quotes from MLK's Three Evils of Society

In this speech, Martin Luther King Jr outlines three evils of society: racism, economic exploitation, and militarism.

Calling for economic and social justice, he proposes that solutions cannot be achieved without addressing the interconnected problems of poverty, war, and racism.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s 1967 speech at the National Conference on New Politics in Chicago.

“Our hopes have been blasted and our dreams have been shattered. The promise of a great society was shipwrecked.”

“What happens to a dream deferred? It leads to bewildering frustration and corroding bitterness.”

“Unemployment rages at a major depression level in the black ghettos. But the bipartisan response is an anti-riot bill rather than a serious poverty program.”

“The corrupt political order seeks to crush even this beginning of hope.”

“The hour is dark. Evil comes forth in the guise of good. It is a time of double-talk when men in high places have a high blood pressure of deceptive rhetoric and an anemia of concrete performance. We cry out against welfare handouts to the poor but generously approve an oil depletion allowance to make the rich, richer...what they truly advocate is socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor.”

“Some future historian will have to say that a great civilization died because it lacked the soul and commitment to make justice a reality for all men.”

“We have deluded ourselves into believing the myth that capitalism grew in prosperity out of the Protestant ethic of hard work and sacrifice. The fact is that capitalism was built on the exploitation and suffering of black slaves and continues to thrive on the exploitation of the poor, both black and white, both here and abroad.”

“There is always more misery in the lower classes than there is humanity in the higher classes.” (King quoting Victor Hugo)

“The time has come for America to face the ultimate choice between humanism and materialism.”

“True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It understands that an edifice that produces beggars needs restructuring.”

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

“A true revolution of values will soon look on easily at the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation it will look at thousands of working people displaced from their jobs with reduced income as a result of automation, while the profits of the employers remain intact and say: this is not just.”