A quote from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s, address at Western Michigan University, December 18, 1963

Now the other myth that gets around is the idea that legislation cannot really solve the problem and that it has no great role to play in this period of social change because you’ve got to change the heart and you can’t change the heart through legislation. You can’t legislate morals. The job must be done through education and religion.

Well, there’s half‐truth involved here.

Certainly, if the problem is to be solved then in the final sense, hearts must be changed. Religion and education must play a great role in changing the heart.

But we must go on to say that while it may be true that morality cannot be legislated, behavior can be regulated.

It may be true that the law cannot change the heart but it can restrain the heartless.

It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me but it can keep him from lynching me and I think that is pretty important, also.

So there is a need for executive orders. There is a need for judicial decrees. There is a need for civil rights legislation on the local scale within states and on the national scale from the federal government.

— This quote is part of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s, December 18, 1963 speech at Western Michigan University. The PDF document online here includes historical background, details about the recovery of the tape recording, transcription of the speech and question and answer session, primary source documents, and a list of library and Internet sources about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.