The fierce urgency of now

[G_j]

We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with a lost opportunity. The tide in the affairs of men does not remain at flood -- it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is adamant to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words, "Too late." There is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect. Omar Khayyam is right: "The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on."


MLK April 4 1967
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edit, link:
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkatimetobreaksilence.htm

[ConsAreLiars]

1. A truthteller

He got to the very essence of things.

[G_j]

2. kick

[Stone_Spirits]

3. another quote from this speech

"As I have walked among the desperate, rejected, and angry young men, I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they ask -- and rightly so -- what about Vietnam? They ask if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -- my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent."

[yella_dawg]

4. Where can we find a figure of such stature...

to lead us in these trying times?

[Stone_Spirits]

6. would they be accepted?

this MLK Jr speech is pretty "radical".

[The Time is Now]

5. I agree wholeheartedly - n/t

[G_j]

7. kick