Theodore Parker

1810–1860 · American Unitarian minister & abolitionist

Theodore Parker was a Boston-based Unitarian minister, Transcendentalist, and fierce abolitionist whose sermons influenced a generation of reformers. In an 1853 sermon he reasoned that though we cannot see the whole shape of moral history, conscience assures us it “bends towards justice.” The line was later distilled into the aphorism that Martin Luther King Jr. would make world-famous.

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“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice”

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