quote · Legacy record
All this is simply to say that all life is interrelated. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality; tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. As long as there is poverty in this world, no man can be totally rich even if he has a billion dollars. As long as diseases are rampant and millions of people cannot expect to live more than twenty or thirty years, no man can be totally healthy, even if he just got a clean bill of health from the finest clinic in America. Strangely enough, I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. You can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be.
All this is simply to say that all life is interrelated. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality; tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. As long as there is poverty in this world, no man can be totally rich even if he has a billion dollars. As long as diseases are rampant and millions of people cannot expect to live more than twenty or thirty years, no man can be totally healthy, even if he just got a clean bill of health from the finest clinic in America. Strangely enough, I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. You can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be.
Approximate author period: c. 1948 AD · modern
Meaning not yet available
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- Author or tradition
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Attribution: attributed - Country attributed
- Not established
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- Approximate author period: c. 1948 AD · modern
Approximate author-period anchor from life dates 1929 to 1968; Wikidata Q8027, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q8027 (accessed 2026-10-08). Not a quotation composition date.
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Supplied reference C; CSV row 160070; supplied attribution, independently unverified
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