Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.' And he goes on toward the end to say, 'Any manвЂ™s death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls it tolls for thee.' We must see this, believe this, and live by it if we are to remain awake through a great revolution. John Donne caught it years ago and placed it in graphic terms: 'No man is an island entire of itself. This is the way GodвЂ™s universe is made this is the way it is structured. And you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. For some strange reason I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. And whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. We are tied together in the single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality.

We must all learn to live together as brothers or we will all perish together as fools. But somehow, and in some way, we have got to do this. Through our scientific and technological genius, we have made of this world a neighborhood and yet we have not had the ethical commitment to make of it a brotherhood. Martin Luther King, Jr., Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution, 31 March 1968 And the alternative to disarmament, the alternative to a greater suspension of nuclear tests, the alternative to strengthening the United Nations and thereby disarming the whole world, may well be a civilization plunged into the abyss of annihilation, and our earthly habitat would be transformed into an inferno that even the mind of Dante could not imagine. It is either nonviolence or nonexistence.

It is no longer a choice, my friends, between violence and nonviolence. 'Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind,' and the best way to start is to put an end to war in Vietnam, because if it continues, we will inevitably come to the point of confronting China which could lead the whole world to nuclear annihilation. There is not a single major ally of the United States of America that would dare send a troop to Vietnam, and so the only friends that we have now are a few client-nations like Taiwan, Thailand, South Korea, and a few others. We have alienated ourselves from other nations so we end up morally and politically isolated in the world. And we could go right down the line and see that something must be done-and something must be done quickly. Yet when they come back home that canвЂ™t hardly live on the same block together. And we force young black men and young white men to fight and kill in brutal solidarity. And here we are ten thousand miles away from home fighting for the so-called freedom of the Vietnamese people when we have not even put our own house in order. Not only that, it has put us in a position of appearing to the world as an arrogant nation. Every time we kill one we spend about five hundred thousand dollars while we spend only fifty-three dollars a year for every person characterized as poverty-stricken in the so-called poverty program, which is not even a good skirmish against poverty. This day we are spending five hundred thousand dollars to kill every Vietcong soldier. It has played havoc with our domestic destinies. It has put us against the self-determination of a vast majority of the Vietnamese people, and put us in the position of protecting a corrupt regime that is stacked against the poor. It has strengthened the military-industrial complex it has strengthened the forces of reaction in our nation. Our involvement in the war in Vietnam has torn up the Geneva Accord. I am convinced that it is one of the most unjust wars that has ever been fought in the history of the world. I pray to God that America will hear this before it is too late, because today weвЂ™re fighting a war.

President Kennedy said on one occasion, 'Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind.' The world must hear this. Anyone who feels, and there are still a lot of people who feel that way, that war can solve the social problems facing mankind is sleeping through a great revolution. I want to say one other challenge that we face is simply that we must find an alternative to war and bloodshed. Some of these statements have been published in books or taken from recorded speeches and sermons. The following are quotes King made from various events and time periods throughout his lifetime on the discussion of war and peace.

Man of war vietnam ign