I Have Decided To Stick With

From a speech titled "Where Do We Go from Here?" delivered at the 11th Annual Southern Christian Leadership Conference convention in Atlanta on August 16, 1967 — later published as Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (1967). Martin Luther King Jr. explained his choice plainly: "I've seen too much hate on the faces of sheriffs in the South… hate is too great a burden to bear." He defined the love he meant as "a strong, demanding love," not mere sentiment, and argued that power without love is reckless while love without power is anemic.