Variant. King said this in “Keep Moving from This Mountain,” his Founders Day address at Spelman College in Atlanta on 10 April 1960. The text reads: “If you can’t fly, run; if you can’t run, walk; if you can’t walk, crawl; but by all means keep moving.” The popular ending, “whatever you do you have to keep moving forward,” isn’t in it.
“If you can’t fly, run; if you can’t run, walk; if you can’t walk, crawl; but by all means keep moving.”
Popular version
“If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.”
The speech
King gave the Founders Day address at Spelman College on 10 April 1960 under the title Keep Moving from This Mountain. The King Papers Project publishes the text, which was printed in the Spelman Messenger that May (King Papers). The title is the key to the line. He named the “mountains” people stay on too long, segregation among them, and the fly-run-walk-crawl sentence says that pace matters less than not stopping.
The same speech has one of his early definitions of agape, “understanding, creative, redemptive goodwill for all men,” the idea behind his quotes on love.
How to cite it
MLA: King, Martin Luther, Jr. “Keep Moving from This Mountain.” Founders Day address, Spelman College, 10 Apr. 1960. The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute, Stanford University, kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/keep-moving-mountain-address-spelman-college-10-april-1960.
APA: King, M. L., Jr. (1960, April 10). Keep moving from this mountain [Address]. Spelman College, Atlanta, GA.
Related quote images
“Everybody can be great, because everybody can serve.”
At Spelman College in Atlanta, in his Founders Day address on 10 April 1960, “Keep Moving from This Mountain.” It was printed in the Spelman Messenger in May 1960 (King Papers).
Is “keep moving forward” part of the quote?
Not in the Spelman text, which ends “but by all means keep moving.” Versions ending “keep moving forward” are widely shared, but we haven’t found a primary text with that wording.
What was happening when King gave this speech?
He was speaking to students in the spring of 1960, as the student sit-in movement against segregated lunch counters was spreading across the South.
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
