Jonathan Eig > Quotes

“To accept evil without challenging it, King concluded, would be to condone it.”
― Jonathan Eig, King: A Life

“We’ve mistaken King’s nonviolence for passivity. We’ve forgotten that his approach was more aggressive than anything the country had seen—that he used peaceful protest as a lever to force those in power to give up many of the privileges they’d hoarded.”
― Jonathan Eig, King: A Life

“And we are not wrong… If we are wrong, the Supreme Court of this nation is wrong. If we are wrong, the Constitution of the United States is wrong. If we are wrong, God Almighty is wrong. If we are wrong, Jesus of Nazareth was merely a utopian dreamer that never came down to earth. If we are wrong, justice is a lie. Love has no meaning. And we are determined here in Montgomery to work and fight until justice runs down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
― Jonathan Eig, King: A Life

“He warned that materialism undermined our moral values, that nationalism threatened to crush all hope of universal brotherhood, that militarism bred cynicism and distrust. He saw a moral rot at the core of American life and worried that racism had blinded many of us to”
― Jonathan Eig, King: A Life

“If you can do one single thing towards a just, durable, and creative peace, you will have fulfilled your major obligation to the world,”
― Jonathan Eig, King: A Life

“King learned to put the emotionalism of the church in context. “All week long,” he said, “at his job, traveling, shopping, eating, in almost everything he does, the Negro represses his emotions; puts up with discrimination; sees himself segregated and shunted into inferior housing, schools, jobs; closes his ears to the names he is called. On Sunday, when he goes to church, all these emotions burst forth. He shouts ‘Amen.’ He sings and stamps his feet, partly from joy at his freedom in his own church, partly from the sorrow of his experiences. For many Negroes, religion has probably provided a safety valve against insanity or rebellion. But there’s a danger in this emotionalism, too. It can become as empty a form as any other.”
― Jonathan Eig, King: A Life

“He loved baseball so much that he sometimes went home after a game, rounded up a few of the kids from the neighborhood, and played in the street until dark.”
― Jonathan Eig, Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig

“King and Malcolm X were often portrayed as antagonists, in part because of Malcolm’s vitriol and because of comments attributed to King in a 1965 Playboy magazine interview conducted by Alex Haley. But the recent discovery of Haley’s unedited interview transcript shows that King was not as critical as Playboy made him sound. The magazine quoted King saying of Malcolm: “He is very articulate, as you say, but I totally disagree with many of his political and philosophical views … I have often wished that he would talk less of violence, because violence is not going to solve our problem. And in his litany of articulating the despair of the Negro without offering any positive, creative alternative, I feel that Malcolm has done himself and our people a great disservice. Fiery demagogic oratory in the black ghettoes, urging Negroes to arm themselves and prepare to engage in violence, as he has done, can reap nothing but grief.” Here’s what King actually said. PLAYBOY: Dr. King, what is your opinion of Negro extremists who advocate armed violence and sabotage?”
― Jonathan Eig, King: A Life

“Ali was everything everybody wanted their child to be, except some ignorant-ass white folks, and they don’t count”
― Jonathan Eig, Ali: A Life

“King’s calm tone and conservative attire may have disguised the boldness of his words: “I think it’s better to be aggressive at this point,” he said. “It seems to me that it is both historically and sociologically true that privileged classes do not give up their privileges voluntarily. And they do not give them up without strong resistance.”
― Jonathan Eig, King: A Life

“he wrote that he didn’t want anyone to think he was seeking sympathy, but that the dangers associated with his work indeed had changed him. Suffering had the power to bring people closer to Jesus, in King’s view. People who were willing to suffer rather than inflict suffering on others could set the example, he said, changing relationships between individuals, communities, racial groups, and nations. He echoed the words of Jesus in Matthew 11:28–30: I have learned now that the Master’s burden is light precisely when we take his yoke upon us. My personal trials have also taught me the value of unmerited suffering. As my suffering mounted I soon realized that there were two ways I can respond to my situation: either to react with bitterness or seek to transform the suffering into a creative force. I decided to follow the latter course … I have lived these last few years with the conviction that unearned suffering is redemptive … The suffering and agonizing moments through which I have passed over the last few years have also drawn me closer to God.”
― Jonathan Eig, King: A Life

“But in hallowing King we have hollowed him. From Montgomery to Chicago, along those streets named Martin Luther King Jr. Drive and Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue and Martin Luther King Jr. Highway and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, poverty and segregation rates remain much higher than the local and national averages, according to recent studies. In those schools named for King, and in almost every school in America, King's life and lessons and often smooth and polished beyond recognition. Young people hear his dream of brotherhood and his wish for children to be judged by the content of their character, but not his cry for an end to the triple evils of materialism, militarism, and racism. [...] Our simplified celebration of King comes at a cost. It saps the strength of his philosophical and intellectual contributions. It undercuts his power to inspire change.”
― Jonathan Eig, King: A Life

“The racial condition … will never be settled right until a more friendly contact is made among the ministers of both races.”
― Jonathan Eig, King: A Life

“When we love on the agape level,” he wrote years later, “we love men not because we like them … but because God loves them.”
― Jonathan Eig, King: A Life

“The Gotham boys have a first baseman, Louis Gehrig, who is called the ‘Babe Ruth’ of the high schools,” wrote the Chicago Tribune.”
― Jonathan Eig, Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig

“I am America,” Clay will proudly declare. “I am the part you won’t recognize. But get used to me. Black, confident, cocky; my name, not yours; my religion, not yours; my goals, my own; get used to me”
― Jonathan Eig, Ali: A Life

“One three-page letter from a thirty-seven-year-old white woman from Pleasantville, New York, concluded: “I am so glad you didn’t sneeze.” Almost ten years later, King would build the final speech of his life around that line, although he would add dramatic power to the anecdote by attributing the letter to a ninth-grade student at White Plains High School. “I, too, am happy that I didn’t sneeze,” he would say. He would repeat the refrain to celebrate all the joys, struggles, and triumphs he would have missed had he made an abrupt move that day in Blumstein’s department store. Thoughts of death had long preoccupied him. Now he saw that nonviolent movements grew stronger when they came under attack. Violent assaults on the determinedly nonviolent aroused sympathy and attracted support for the cause. It was a lesson that would shape the last ten years of his life.”
― Jonathan Eig, King: A Life

“Great men … have not been boasters and buffoons,” wrote Emerson, “but perceivers of the terror of life, and have manned themselves to face it.”
― Jonathan Eig, King: A Life

“Scottish philosopher William Drummond, read: “He who will not reason is a bigot; he who cannot reason is a fool; he who dares not reason is a slave.”
― Jonathan Eig, Opening Day: The Story of Jackie Robinson's First Season

“Italian-Americans in New York had not been in much of a flag-waving mood prior to DiMaggio's arrival. By the All-Star break, the rookie had established himself as a wonderful player (.358, 10HR, 60 RBIs), fully justifying the acclaim. But Gehrig was even better (.399, 20 HR, 61 RBIs). He was leading the league in nearly every category, including invisibility.”
― Jonathan Eig, Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig

“one irrepressible folk hero hailed as our favorite defender of the truth and resister of authority,” Budd Schulberg”
― Jonathan Eig, Ali: A Life

“In an essay for the Saturday Review, a magazine that appealed to economically comfortable, upper-middlebrow readers, King wrote: “The flames of Watts illuminated more than the western sky; they cast light on the imperfections in the civil rights movement and the tragic shallowness of white racial policy in the explosive ghettos.”
― Jonathan Eig, King: A Life

“It was all by design, as he said later. Angry fighters don’t think clearly. They don’t stick to their plans. They get frustrated, sloppy. Clay knew that Liston was sensitive about his image, that he yearned for respect, and so Clay worked to deny him that respect. By labeling Liston an ugly bear, Clay was tweaking his opponent’s most sensitive nerve and perhaps using racism to do it,”
― Jonathan Eig, Ali: A Life

“Guided by anger, prejudice, or patriotism, boxing’s rulers decided that Muhammad Ali was unfit to wear the sport’s crown because he was a Muslim who refused to fight for his country.”
― Jonathan Eig, Ali: A Life

“Despite his plagiarism, and despite his fundamental disagreements with them, King learned lasting theological lessons from Tillich and Wieman. In his seminal work, The Courage to Be, Tillich wrote that the courage to be requires acceptance of anxiety—the anxiety that comes with guilt, condemnation, and death. That courage means staying connected to God when one loses faith. “But doubt is not the opposite of faith,” Tillich wrote, “it is one element of faith.”
― Jonathan Eig, King: A Life

“the World Boxing Association and the New York State Athletic Commission had suspended Ali’s boxing license and stripped him of his championship title. Soon after, with a unity of spirit, all the other boxing commissions in the country fell into line. Never mind that they had long tolerated the mafia and professional gamblers in their sport. Never mind that Ali had not yet been convicted of a crime.”
― Jonathan Eig, Ali: A Life

“DR. KING: Fiery, demagogic oratory in the black ghettoes, urging Negroes to arm themselves and prepare to engage in violence can achieve nothing but negative results. Those who are fired up in the audiences go home and face the same unchanged conditions; what is left but for them to become bitter, disillusioned and cynical. The extremist leaders who offer a call to arms are invariably unwilling to lead what they themselves know would certainly end in bloody, chaotic total failure. The struggle of the Negro in America, to be successful, must be waged with positive efforts that are kept strictly within the framework of our democratic society. This means reaching and moving the large groups of people necessary—of both races—to activate sufficiently the conscience of a nation. It is this effort that the S.C.L.C. attempts to achieve through the program which we call creative non-violent direct-action. PLAYBOY: Dr. King, would you care to comment upon the articulate former Black Muslim, Malcolm X? DR. KING: I have met Malcolm X, but circumstances didn’t enable me to talk with him for more than a minute. I totally disagree with many of his political and philosophical views, as I understand them. He is very articulate, as you say. I don’t want to seem to sound as if I feel so self-righteous, or absolutist, that I think I have the only truth, the only way. Maybe he does have some of the answer. But I know that I have so often felt that I wished that he would talk less of violence, because I don’t think that violence can solve our problem. And in his litany of expressing the despair of the Negro, without offering a positive, creative approach, I think that he falls into a rut sometimes.”
― Jonathan Eig, King: A Life

“Daley didn’t demand or enforce segregated schools in Chicago. He didn’t have to. The schools were segregated because the city’s neighborhoods were segregated. People called it de facto segregation, meaning that it was a fact, a given, a natural outcome of private individuals’ choices, in contrast to de jure segregation, which was required by law. But the distinction was misleading. Segregation in the North was both de jure and de facto; it was a function of law, public policy, and discriminatory business practices, for starters. Chicagoans commuting to and from work on the new Dan Ryan Expressway saw it for themselves. The original design for the highway had been shifted several blocks to create a firewall of sorts between Black and white neighborhoods. There was nothing accidental or natural about it.”
― Jonathan Eig, King: A Life

“Eventually, Martin persuaded Clay to fly. “But then he went to an army supply store and bought a parachute and actually wore it on the plane”
― Jonathan Eig, Ali: A Life

“Doctors would only prescribe birth control in the most dire of circumstances, and even then, what form of birth control would they prescribe? There were no reliable options, except perhaps the condom. But condoms depended on the cooperation of men, and Sanger’s experience in the tenements of New York City told her that men didn’t mind six or seven children so long as they were able to enjoy sex when the mood struck them. Women were the ones dealing most with the consequences of sex, not only because they were the ones getting pregnant but also because they were the ones raising the children.”
― Jonathan Eig, The Birth of the Pill: How Four Crusaders Reinvented Sex and Launched a Revolution