Martin Luther King's Inspiring Language at Temple Israel of Hollywood

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Somehow the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.”

So said civil rights organizer Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in his “Sermon at Temple Israel of Hollywood” on February 26, 1965. Temple Israel of Hollywood was holding a fundraiser to support the Civil Rights movement. King laid out civil right’s moral foundation. A reform Jewish synagogue, the temple has been the spiritual home of Elizabeth Taylor, Sammy Davis Jr., Edward G. Robinson, and Leonard Nimoy.

While introducing King, the Temple’s distinguished rabbi, Dr. Max Nussbaum, praised King as:

“The man who has changed the moral climate of America to a point by which our country and our nation will never be the same again.”

Long admired as the master of spiritual language, King employed a profound knowledge of philosophy and theology, a gift for choosing the exact word needed to relate his ideas to his audience, and passionate delivery. In this magnificent sermon, King’s aphorisms conveyed his moral ideas to his audience. An aphorism is a short, thought-provoking, memorable statement that reflects wise, careful insights. Aphorisms, like King’s statement about “the arc of the moral universe,” encourage the audience to reflect on important issues in deep, provocative ways. As the master of aphorism, King wove his moral points around a series of wise sayings. 

As we study King’s wise sayings, let us turn first to:

“Somehow the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.” 

The word somehow, a word that denies certainty, reaches instead toward the inexplicable: the arc of justice is spiritual, not scientific. King used that aphorism to organize a message of hope. King wound that aphorism around the traditional gospel song, “We Shall Overcome.” The song and the aphorism alike implied that justice might come slowly, but we can take it as a matter of faith that it cannot be stopped. He then quoted Thomas Carlisle that “No lie can live forever.” King continued that “With this faith we will be able to hue out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope.” He concluded the topic by quoting a hopeful prophecy from the biblical book of Job, “the morning stars will sing together and the sons of God will shout for joy.”

Another of King’s aphorisms reminded the audience to focus on moral ends:

“The great tragedy of life is that too often we allow the means by which we live to outdistance the ends for which we live.” [Italics added]

Developing that aphorism, King complained that “we have allowed our technology to outdistance our theology.” Our failure to recognize “the ends for which we live” had led the country, King insisted, onto a wrong moral path:

“Through our scientific genius we made of the world a neighborhood, but we failed through moral commitment to make of it a brotherhood, and so we’ve ended up with guided missiles and misguided men.” [Italics added] 

Temple Israel of Hollywood

That brilliant contrast between neighborhood and brotherhood accentuated the aphorism’s wisdom: that we must never forget the ends for which we live.

Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Speech, "Love, Law, and Civil Disobedience"

  
Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" Made Biblical Morality a Public Imperative

Recognizing that Americans value prosperity, but wishing to direct attention to the ethical realm, King introduced yet another moving aphorism:

“A great nation is a compassionate nation.”

That is, prosperity alone did not make a nation great. Neither, as King noted later in the speech, does military might. Instead, a compassionate nation, King insisted, must concern itself with people who are “smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in an affluent society.” A compassionate nation must, he continued, rise above what King then called “the mountain of indifference.” He insisted that we all live together “in a single garment of destiny.” (What a powerful metaphor!)

Metaphors in the Temple Israel of Hollywood Speech

Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Speech about Mountains

 
In the speech's most powerful passage, King laid out a series of aphorisms and metaphors that emphasized the centrality of love:

“I’m convinced that love is the only absolute ultimately; love is the highest good.”

King followed that statement with a powerful aphorism about love and religion:

“He who hates does not know God; he who hates has no knowledge of God.

That theme led King to describe love as “the supreme unifying principle of life.”

Driving that point home, King quoted Jesus from the Gospel of Matthew (22:37): “Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, with all thy strength, with all thy mind, and thy neighbor as thyself.” The Jewish congregation would, I think, have immediately noticed that Jesus was echoing Deuteronomy 6:5 from the Hebrew Scriptures.

As he neared his speech’s end, King warned the congregation that anyone who stands up for love or justice was certain to be branded with “bad names:”

“Some will be called reds and communists simply because they believe in the brotherhood of man.”

King’s prediction proved to be stunningly true. King’s brilliant aphorism about the “brotherhood of man” predicted the civil rights’ ongoing struggle with darkness. Such a profound warning! Indeed, even two generations later, we hear Erec Smith of the conservative Cato Institute stating that the idea of diversity, equality, and conclusion “draws from radical Marxist theory.”  That is, in my view, for every person who preaches love and community, we can always find someone else who gives wickedness the moral high ground.

Finally, let us hearken back to Rabbi Nussbaum’s introduction. King had indeed “changed the moral climate of America” to the end that the United States would “never be the same again.” Although we, as a nation, continue to struggle with civil rights - which conservatives are, once again, attacking in vicious fashion, King’s statements that public policy must follow a moral, religious code continue to resonate. His unforgettable statements echo through the years.

by William D. Harpine  

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Rhetorical Note: How does an aphorism differ from a slogan? I say that the difference lies in the human heart: an aphorism is a wise saying that leads people to reflect about what is right and wrong, good or bad, or wise or unwise. A slogan, in contrast, is a glib statement that discourages discussion.

Here are two simple examples. “The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice” is an aphorism that helps us think about justice and divine guidance. King’s statement gave people hope as they struggled to overcome a segregated society. Also, it encourages us to reflect on our societal values. King’s aphorism contrasts with, “My country right or wrong,” which is not an aphorism; no, it is merely a slogan. Its purpose is to shut down conversation: if we follow that slogan, its blind nationalism tells us to ignore public policy’s morality. We can better understand the distinction if we remember Captain Stephen Decatur’s original statement: “Our country! In her intercourse with foreign nations, may she always be in the right, and always successful, right or wrong.” Unlike the crude sloganeering of “my country right or wrong,” Decatur saw that that a wise nation should act justly. Decatur’s full statement was not an aphorism (it was a thesis-antithesis, a different kind of rhetorical figure), but the crude, morality-free slogan “my country right or wrong,” coldly stripped from Decatur's original context, mistakenly teaches that patriotism must erase our conscience. That reflects the difference between a slogan and an aphorism. 

Copyright ©2026 by William D. Harpine

Image of Martin Luther King, Jr.: US News & World Report, 

public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Image of Temple Israel of Hollywood, stevendamron, Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license, 

via Wikimedia Commons