President Barack Obama

It is impossible not to think of Martin Luther King today, as the dream that he so powerfully articulated finds its realization in reality.

I offer two excerpts from his speeches in Oslo after winning the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize.

On the ability of individuals to influence the course of history -

“I refuse to accept the idea that man is mere flotsom and jetsom in the river of life, unable to influence the unfolding events which surround him. I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality.”

And the prophecy with which he saw the significance of the Civil Rights Movement -

“In the past ten years unarmed gallant men and women of the United States have given living testimony to the moral power and efficacy of nonviolence. By the thousands, faceless, anonymous, relentless young people, black and white, have temporarily left the ivory towers of learning for the barricades of bias. Their courageous and disciplined activities have come as a refreshing oasis in a desert sweltering with the heat of injustice. They have taken our whole nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in the formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. One day all of America will be proud of their achievements.”

On days like this, it is possible to believe again in essential human goodness.