Did Martin Luther King Jr. say the “lives end when we become silent” quote – Fact Check

ByCraig Haley

Did Martin Luther King Jr. ever utter the famous quote “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter“?

Each year on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, January 21st, one particular quote supposedly uttered by the civil rights activist gains more traction than most. Attached to countless memes and appearing on numerous (yet never consistently accurate) “famous quote” websites, the words “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter” have been attached to King Jr. for years.

However, there has never been a confirmed instance of exactly when or where he actually stated those words. Spurious quotes are often attached to well-known public figures, and the phenomenon can happen for a variety of reasons. Sometimes someone simply makes something up as a prank or to maliciously promote an ideology. Often it can simply be a mistake or misattribution.


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Or sometimes a speech can be paraphrased, condensed or clarified by well-intentioned third parties, and over time, it is those altered words that are misattributed as the speech or quote itself. It is likely that this is what may have occurred here.

As others have pointed out, Martin Luther King Jr., in his role as a civil rights activist for equal rights, talked frequently about the importance of promoting and standing up for justice, and it is likely that the above quote is a paraphrase or condensed version of one of his many speeches on that subject, such as the excerpt below given in 1965 –

A man dies when he refuses to stand up for that which is right. A man dies when he refuses to stand up for justice. A man dies when he refuses to take a stand for that which is true.

However, there is no recorded or documented instance – at the time of writing, at least – that he ever gave that direct quote.

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