A few years ago I served as a speechwriter for Oscar Arias, the former President of Costa Rica and 1987 Nobel Peace Laureate, who toured regularly to lecture on issues of demilitarization, arms control, and globalization.

At one point, I was working on a speech for an upcoming event at a college with a conservative reputation, where faculty members migrated between the campus and the Department of Defense. We knew that, even in the best of circumstances, there would be some unsympathetic listeners in the audience. But to compound the problem, the event came on the heels of one of our frequent bombings of Iraq.

I remember that the environment felt hostile, filled with clamorings of war. I wrote into the speech a quote by Martin Luther King, which I had recently read in his 1967 work, Where Do We Go From Here?

"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you murder the hater, but you do not murder hate... Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."

When Don Oscar and I sat down to read over the material, he quietly reviewed the quotation. To my surprise, he grew angry and turned toward me accusingly:

"That passage is very important," he scolded. "Why haven't we been using it before?"

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