Variant. The idea is King’s but the wording isn’t. At Oberlin College’s commencement in June 1965 he said “the time is always right to do right.” In the Letter from Birmingham Jail (1963) he wrote “the time is always ripe to do right.” The popular “to do what is right” appears in neither text.
The version on posters, “the time is always right to do what is right,” adds two words. Famous lines often get smoothed this way as they’re copied.
1963: “ripe”
Eight Birmingham clergy members had called King’s protests “untimely” (King Institute). In his reply he turned the argument about timing around:
We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right.
“Ripe” answers critics who kept saying the moment wasn’t ready.
1965: “right”
Two years later, speaking to Oberlin’s graduating class under the title Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution, he made the same point:
Without this hard work, time becomes an ally of the primitive forces of social stagnation. So we must help time and realize that the time is always right to do right.
His point is the opposite of patience. Time doesn’t fix injustice by itself.
How to cite it
MLA: King, Martin Luther, Jr. “Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution.” Commencement address, Oberlin College, June 1965. Oberlin College Archives, www2.oberlin.edu/external/EOG/BlackHistoryMonth/MLK/CommAddress.html.
APA: King, M. L., Jr. (1965, June). Remaining awake through a great revolution [Commencement address]. Oberlin College.
Did MLK say “The time is always right to do what is right”?
Not in those words, as far as the primary texts show. He said “the time is always right to do right” at Oberlin College in June 1965, and wrote “the time is always ripe to do right” in 1963.
Where did King say “the time is always right to do right”?
In “Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution,” his commencement address at Oberlin College, Ohio, in June 1965: “So we must help time and realize that the time is always right to do right” (Oberlin College transcript).
Which version should I quote?
For a direct quotation, use “The time is always right to do right” and cite Oberlin, 1965. Avoid putting “to do what is right” in quotation marks, because you won’t find a source for it.
How this page was made: written with AI assistance from the primary sources listed on our sources page.Every quotation and fact was checked against those sources by Maddy on 6 October 2026. How we verify · Last updated 6 October 2026
