A Quote by Martin Luther King, Jr.

As we have seen, the first public expression of disenchantment with nonviolence arose around the question of 'self-defense.' In a sense this is a false issue, for the right to defend one's home and one's person when attacked has been guaranteed through the ages by common law.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Quote Topics

Ages Around Attacked Been Common Common Law Defend Defense Disenchantment Expression False First Guaranteed Home Issue Law Nonviolence Person Public Question Right Seen Self Self-Defense Sense Through

Quote Author

Martin Luther King, Jr.
American - Leader
January 15, 1929 - April 4, 1968

... the right to defend one's home and one's person when attacked has been guaranteed through the ages by common law.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

The law of nature gives a man the right to defend himself when he's attacked. And God's law itself gives a man the right to defend himself when he's attacked.so, peaceful suffering and passive resistance and all of that stuff is all right maybe in India somewhere, where the people in India outnumber the whites - about a million to one.But here in America, when you tell that's like an elephant sitting down on a - on a mouse in India with [Mahatma] Gandhi.

Malcolm X

The law of nature gives a man the right to defend himself when he's attacked. And God's law itself gives a man the right to defend himself when he's attacked.

Malcolm X

And, lastly, to vindicate these rights, when actually violated and attacked, the subjects of England are entitled, in the first place, to the regular administration and free course of justice in the courts of law; next to the right of petitioning the king and parliament for redress of grievances; and, lastly, to the right of having and using arms for self preservation and defense.

William Blackstone

It's time to question laws that senselessly expand the concept of self-defense and sow dangerous conflict in our neighborhoods. These laws try to fix something that was never broken. There has always been a legal defense for using deadly force if - and the 'if' is important - if no safe retreat is available. But we must examine laws that take this further by eliminating the common sense and age-old requirement that people who feel threatened have a duty to retreat, outside their home, if they can do so safely.

Eric Holder

I have asserted the right of Negroes to meet the violence of the Ku Klux Klan by armed self-defense — and have acted on it. It has always been an accepted right of Americans, as the history of our Western states proves, that where the law is unable, or unwilling, to enforce order, the citizens can, and must act in self-defense against lawless violence.

Robert F. Williams

Semi-automatic rifles, like semi-automatic handguns, have not traditionally been banned and are in common use by law-abiding citizens for self-defense in the home, hunting, and other lawful uses.

Brett Kavanaugh

When Israelis in the occupied territories now claim that they have to defend themselves, they are defending themselves in the sense that any military occupier has to defend itself against the population they are crushing. You can't defend yourself when you're militarily occupying someone else's land. That's not defense. Call it what you like, it's not defense.

Noam Chomsky

The inviolability of the person which is a reflection of the absolute inviolability of God, finds its primary and fundamental expression in the inviolability of human life. Above all, the common outcry, which is justly made on behalf of human rights-for example, the right to health, to home, to work, to family, to culture- is false and illusory if the right to life, the most basic and fundamental right and the condition for all other personal rights, is not defended with maximum determination.

Pope John Paul II

The first right of every human being is the right of self-defense. Without that right, all other rights are meaningless. The right of self-defense is not something the government bestows upon its citizens. It is an inalienable right, older than the Constitution itself. It existed prior to government and prior to the social contract of our Constitution.

Larry Craig

This historically has been an issue that both parties have run away from. For the first time, Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party in its platform are making this issue, about needing to do better as a country to take common sense steps to help prevent gun violence.

Elizabeth Esty

Sustainable farms are to today's headlong rush toward global destruction what the monasteries were to the Dark Ages: places to preserve human skills and crafts until some semblance of common sense and common purpose returns to the public mind.

Gene Logsdon

If we are nonviolent through and through, our nonviolence would have been self-evident.

Mahatma Gandhi

Self defense is a primary law of nature, which no subsequent law of society can abolish; the immediate gift of the Creator, obliges everyone to resist the first approaches of tyranny.

Elbridge Gerry

... the precedents for feminine self-expression run back through all the ages since the art of writing was invented. ... The era may witness the first female engineer, motor truck chauffeur, radio broadcaster, head of an aviation school, or federal prohibition officer, but it has not produced the first thinking, creative, and writing woman by any means.