Bending Toward Justice
Martin Luther King, Jr., Memorial, Washington, D.C. Look at the facts of the world. You see a continual and progressive triumph of the right. I do not pretend to understand the moral universe, the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways. I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. But from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice. Things refuse to be mismanaged long. Jefferson trembled when he thought of slavery and remembered that God is just. Ere long all America will tremble. These words come from a sermon by Theodore Parker, a Unitarian Minister, Transcendentalist, and Abolitionist. They first saw print in a collection of sermons published in 1853, and, quoted by essayists, preachers, and politicians, were ultimately boiled down to this aphorism: "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." In that form, the quote found its way into the sermons of many a pr...