Malcolm X quotes
Born
May 19, 1925 Omaha, Nebraska.
Died
February 21, 1965.
Occupation
Minister, human rights activist.
Malcolm X born Malcolm Little and later also known as el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz, was an African-American Muslim minister and human rights activist.
I don’t even call it violence when it’s in self defense; I call it intelligence.
– Malcolm X
For me, my ‘X’ replaced the white slave master name of ‘Little’ which some blue-eyed devil named Little had imposed on my parental forebears.
– Malcolm X
The future belongs to those who prepare for it today.
– Malcolm X
History is a people’s memory, and without a memory, man is demoted to the lower animals.
– Malcolm X
The white man, in his press, is going to identify me with ‘hate.’
– Malcolm X
If ballots won’t work, bullets will.
– Malcolm X
History proves that the white man is a devil.
– Malcolm X
I believe in the brotherhood of all men, but I don’t believe in wasting brotherhood on anyone who doesn’t want to practice it with me. Brotherhood is a two-way street.
– Malcolm X
There is nothing in our book, the Koran, that teaches us to suffer peacefully. Our religion teaches us to be intelligent.
– Malcolm X
America is the first country… that can actually have a bloodless revolution.
– Malcolm X
When ghetto living seems normal, you have no shame, no privacy.
– Malcolm X
You don’t have a peaceful revolution. You don’t have a turn-the-cheek revolution. There’s no such thing as a nonviolent revolution.
– Malcolm X
America preaches integration and practices segregation.
– Malcolm X
If you have no critics you’ll likely have no success.
– Malcolm X
I just don’t believe that when people are being unjustly oppressed that they should let someone else set rules for them by which they can come out from under that oppression.
– Malcolm X
Integration will not bring a man back from the grave.
– Malcolm X
If you’re not ready to die for it, put the word ‘freedom’ out of your vocabulary.
– Malcolm X
The black man in Africa had mastered the arts and sciences. He knew the course of the stars in the universe before the man up in Europe knew that the earth wasn’t flat.
– Malcolm X
In the Bible, God offered the Pharaoh freedom if he would just let the oppressed people free to go to the land of milk and honey. But the Pharaoh disobeyed, and he was destroyed.
– Malcolm X
Being an old farm boy myself, chickens coming home to roost never did make me sad; they’ve always made me glad.
– Malcolm X
In all our deeds, the proper value and respect for time determines success or failure.
– Malcolm X
Not one black man is prominent in Brazil. The Negroes there are still at the bottom.
– Malcolm X
I’m for truth, no matter who tells it. I’m for justice, no matter who it’s for or against.
– Malcolm X
I believe in human beings, and that all human beings should be respected as such, regardless of their color.
– Malcolm X
My black brothers and sisters – of all religious beliefs, or of no religious beliefs – we all have in common the greatest binding tie we could have. We are all black people!
– Malcolm X
You can’t separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom.
– Malcolm X
Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you’re a man, you take it.
– Malcolm X
Envy blinds men and makes it impossible for them to think clearly.
– Malcolm X
Stumbling is not falling.
– Malcolm X
If you have a dog, I must have a dog. If you have a rifle, I must have a rifle. If you have a club, I must have a club. This is equality.
– Malcolm X
I believe in a religion that believes in freedom. Any time I have to accept a religion that won’t let me fight a battle for my people, I say to hell with that religion.
– Malcolm X
Sitting at the table doesn’t make you a diner. You must be eating some of what’s on that plate. Being here in America doesn’t make you an American. Being born here in America doesn’t make you an American.
– Malcolm X
If you turn the other cheek, you can be enslaved for 1,000 years.
– Malcolm X
The White man pays Reverend Martin Luther King so that Martin Luther King can keep the Negro defenseless.
– Malcolm X
When we say Afro American, we include everyone in the Western Hemisphere of African descent. South America is America. Central America is America. South America has many people in it of African descent.
– Malcolm X
In the Muslim world, I had seen that men with white complexions were more genuinely brotherly than anyone else had ever been. That… was the start of a radical alteration in my whole outlook about ‘white men.’
– Malcolm X
I am for violence if non-violence means we continue postponing a solution to the American black man’s problem just to avoid violence.
– Malcolm X
The Honorable Elijah Muhammad says that we should be separate, all right, but in this separate state or separate existence, the black man should be given the opportunity and the incentive to do for himself what the white man has done for himself.
– Malcolm X
The American Negro never can be blamed for his racial animosities – he is only reacting to 400 years of the conscious racism of the American whites.
– Malcolm X
The media’s the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that’s power. Because they control the minds of the masses.
– Malcolm X
I have more respect for a man who lets me know where he stands, even if he’s wrong, than the one who comes up like an angel and is nothing but a devil.
– Malcolm X
White America is in the minority.
– Malcolm X
Nobody should teach the black man in America to turn the other cheek, unless someone is teaching the white man in America to turn the other cheek.
– Malcolm X
We won’t organize any black man to be a Democrat or a Republican because both of them have sold us out. Both of them have sold us out; both parties have sold us out. Both parties are racist, and the Democratic Party is more racist than the Republican Party.
– Malcolm X
You can’t legislate good will – that comes through education.
– Malcolm X
Truth is on the side of the oppressed.
– Malcolm X
Segregation is that which is forced upon an inferior by a superior. Separation is done voluntarily by two equals.
– Malcolm X
The true Islam has shown me that a blanket indictment of all white people is as wrong as when whites make blanket indictments against blacks.
– Malcolm X
There is no better than adversity. Every defeat, every heartbreak, every loss, contains its own seed, its own lesson on how to improve your performance the next time.
– Malcolm X
Be peaceful, be courteous, obey the law, respect everyone; but if someone puts his hand on you, send him to the cemetery.
– Malcolm X
A man who stands for nothing will fall for anything.
– Malcolm X
You’re not supposed to be so blind with patriotism that you can’t face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who says it.
– Malcolm X
You don’t have to be a man to fight for freedom. All you have to do is to be an intelligent human being.
– Malcolm X
Good education, housing and jobs are imperatives for the Negroes, and I shall support them in their fight to win these objectives, but I shall tell the Negroes that while these are necessary, they cannot solve the main Negro problem.
– Malcolm X
Power in defense of freedom is greater than power in behalf of tyranny and oppression, because power, real power, comes from our conviction which produces action, uncompromising action.
– Malcolm X
Power never takes a back step only in the face of more power.
– Malcolm X
You show me a capitalist, and I’ll show you a bloodsucker.
– Malcolm X
Without education, you are not going anywhere in this world.
– Malcolm X
All I held against Jews was that so many Jews actually were hypocrites in their claim to be friends of the American black man.
– Malcolm X
To have once been a criminal is no disgrace. To remain a criminal is the disgrace.
– Malcolm X
The Honorable Elijah Muhammad teaches us that God, now, is about to establish a kingdom on this earth, based upon brotherhood and peace. And the white man is against brotherhood, and the white man is against peace.
– Malcolm X