A right delayed is a right denied.

The aphorism argues that justice is time-sensitive: when authorities postpone recognizing or enforcing a legitimate claim, the delay itself effectively cancels the right in practice. It highlights how procedural stalling—through courts, legislatures, or administrative inertia—can be a form of oppression, because people continue to suffer the harms the “right” was meant to remedy. The line is often invoked in civil-rights and human-rights debates to insist that gradualism is not neutral; it preserves the status quo. Although frequently attributed to Martin Luther King Jr., the sentiment is older and widely used in legal and political rhetoric.