Martin Luther King Jr. Quotes

Silence is complicity. Speak now or surrender your ground.

The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.

Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted, the indifference of those who should have known better, the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most, that has made it possible for evil to triumph.

Between the government which does evil and the people who accept it - there is a certain shameful solidarity.

Complicity with error will take from the best of men the power to enter any successful protest against it.

Passivity is the same as defending injustice.

Evil prospers when good men do nothing.

My doctrine is this, that if we see cruelty or wrong that we have the power to stop, and do nothing, we make ourselves sharers in the guilt.

Tolerating evil leads only to more evil. And when good people stand by and do nothing while wickedness reigns, their communities will be consumed.

Undoubtedly, to salve your conscience, you have now and then helped some miserable human being, but millions of human beings were murdered and nary a protest was heard.

The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in times of great moral crisis maintain their neutrality

It is the job of thinking people not to be on the side of the executioners.

Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.

You may choose to look the other way but you can never again say you did not know.

To be silent is to be complicit.

To ignore evil is to become an accomplice to it.

To remain silent in the face of evil is itself a form of evil.

You can't remain inactive in the face of injustice without, to some extent, being guilty of it.

Silence is consent. And silence where life and liberty is at stake, where by a timely protest we could stay the destoyer's hand, and do not do so, is as criminal as giving actual aid to the oppressor, for it answers his purpose.

As Martin Luther King said, "Passively to participate in an unjust system is to accept that system and to participate in its evil."

Silence in the face of atrocity is not neutrality; silence in the face of atrocity is acquiescence.

Bad things happen when good people pretend nothing is wrong.

To see evil and not call it evil is evil.

Many years later, after Niemöller had been imprisoned for eight years in concentration camps as the personal prisoner of Adolf Hitler, he penned these infamous words: First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out - because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the Trade Unionist, and I did not speak out - because I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out - because I was not a Jew. And then they came for me - and there was no one left to speak for me.

It is not a man's duty, as a matter of course, to devote himself to the eradication of any, even the most enormous wrong; he may still properly have other concerns to engage him; but it is his duty, at least, to wash his hands of it, and, if he gives it no thought longer, not to give it practically his support. If I devote myself to other pursuits and contemplations, I must first see, at least, that I do not pursue them sitting upon another man's shoulders.