Top 100 Malcolm X Quotes
#1. The American Negro has been entirely brainwashed from ever seeing or thinking of himself, as he should, as a part of the non-white peoples of the world.
Malcolm X
#2. There is nothing in our book, the Qur'an, that teaches us to suffer peacefully. Our religion teaches us to be intelligent. Be peaceful, be courteous, obey the law, respect everyone; but if someone lays a hand on you, send him to the cemetery.
Malcolm X
#3. The only difference between [America] and South Africa, South Africa preaches separation and practices separation, America preaches integration and practices segregation. This is the only difference, they don't practice what they preach, whereas South Africa practices and preaches the same thing.
Malcolm X
#4. When you have an organization that's neither political nor religious and doesn't take part in the civil rights struggle, what can it call itself? It's in a vacuum.
Malcolm X
#5. Any time you demonstrate against segregation and a man has the audacity to put a police dog on you, kill that dog, kill him, I'm telling you, kill that dog. I say it if they put me in jail tomorrow, kill that dog. Then you'll put a stop to it.
Malcolm X
#6. Foreign diplomats could have modeled their conduct on the way the Negro postmen, Pullman porters, and dining car waiters of Roxbury [Massachusetts] acted, striding around as if they were wearing top hats and cutaways.
Malcolm X
#7. You can't legislate good will - that comes through education.
Malcolm X
#8. You can't have capitalism without racism.
Malcolm X
#9. America's racism is among their own fellow whites. That's where sincere whites who really mean to accomplish something have got to work.
Malcolm X
#10. A race of people is like and individual man; until it uses its own talent, takes pride in its own history, expresses its own culture, affirms its own selfhood, it can never fulfill itself.
Malcolm X
#11. 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
#13. We are nonviolent with people who are nonviolent with us.
Malcolm X
#14. 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
#15. If it's lawful to have a rifle club to kill pheasants, it should be just as lawful to have one to kill wolves or dogs that are being sicked on little black babies. In fact, it's constitutional. Article Number Two of the constitution guarantees the right of every citizen to own a rifle or a shot gun.
Malcolm X
#16. The day that the black man takes an uncompromising step and realizes that he's within his rights, when his own freedom is being jeopardized, to use any means necessary to bring about his freedom or put a halt to that injustice, I don't think he'll be by himself.
Malcolm X
#17. Culture is an indispensable weapon in the freedom struggle.
Malcolm X
#18. I'm sorry to say that the subject I most disliked was mathematics. I have thought about it. I think the reason was that mathematics leaves no room for argument. If you made a mistake, that was all there was to it.
Malcolm X
#19. Nonviolence is fine as long as it works.
Malcolm X
#20. Yes, I'm an extremist. The Black race here in North America is in extremely bad condition. You show me a Black man who isn't an extremist and I'll show you one who needs psychiatric attention.
Malcolm X
#21. They asked if I knew what 'conscientious objector' meant. I told them that when the white man asked me to go off somewhere and fight and maybe die to preserve the way the white man treated the black man in America, then my conscience made me object.
Malcolm X
#22. I Used the Word 'Negro' and I was Firmly Corrected
Malcolm X
#23. 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
#24. And in the racial climate of this country today, it is anybody's guess which of the 'extremes' in approach to the black man's problems might personally meet a fatal catastrophe first - 'non-violent' Dr. King, or so-called 'violent' me.
Malcolm X
#25. In fact, once he is motivated no one can change more completely than the man who has been at the bottom. I call myself the best example of that.
Malcolm X
#26. I don't mean go out and get violent; but at the same time you should never be nonviolent unless you run into some nonviolence. I'm nonviolent with those who are nonviolent with me. But when you drop that violence on me, then you've made me go insane, and I'm not responsible for what I do.
Malcolm X
#27. Human rights are something you were born with. Human rights are your God-given rights. Human rights are the rights that are recognized by all nations of this earth.
Malcolm X
#28. As long as you are convinced you have never done anything, you can never do anything.
Malcolm X
#29. My feeling about in-laws was that they were outlaws.
Malcolm X
#30. Not one black man is prominent in Brazil. The Negroes there are still at the bottom.
Malcolm X
#31. Everybody shall be accepted no matter what they stand for, you are not always going to agree on their faith.
Malcolm X
#32. I believe in human beings, and that all human beings should be respected as such, regardless of their color
Malcolm X
#33. The only persons who really changed history are those who changed men's thinking about themselves.
Malcolm X
#34. America is the first country ... that can actually have a bloodless revolution.
Malcolm X
#35. Each of us should make the most of our lives. We should give life our best-let us use our lives more wisely to chase our dreams, find our true purpose, and be as happy and successful as possible.
Malcolm X
#36. What is a Dixiecrat? A Democrat. A Dixiecrat is nothing but a Democrat in disguise.
Malcolm X
#37. [My half-sister] Ella and I always were much closer as basic types; we're dominant people, and [my other half-sister] Mary has always been mild and quiet, almost shy.
Malcolm X
#38. Integration will not bring a man back from the grave.
Malcolm X
#39. Growing is the result of learning.
Malcolm X
#40. I'm with an old family was the euphemism used to dignify the professions of white folks' cooks and maids who talked so affectedly among their own kind in Roxbury [Massachusetts] that you couldn't even understand them.
Malcolm X
#41. We assert that in those areas where the government is either unable or unwilling to protect the lives and property of our people, that our peopie are within our rights to protect themselves by whatever means necessary.
Malcolm X
#42. Be peaceful, be courteous, obey the law, respect everyone; but if someone puts his hand on you, send him to the cemetery.
Malcolm X
#43. Speaking like this doesn't mean that we're anti-white, but it does mean we're anti-exploitation, we're anti-degradation, we're anti-oppression.
Malcolm X
#44. I'm for truth, no matter who tells it. I'm for justice, no matter who it is for or against. I'm a human being, first and foremost, and as such I'm for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.
Malcolm X
#45. Concerning non-violence: it is criminal to teach a man not to defend himself when he is the constant victim of brutal attacks.
Malcolm X
#46. Power in defense of freedom is greater than power on behalf of tyranny and oppression.
Malcolm X
#47. Without education, you are not going anywhere in this world.
Malcolm X
#48. As I say, if we bring up religion we'll have differences; we'll have arguments; and we'll never be able to get together.
Malcolm X
#49. No sane black man really wants integration! No sane white man really wants integration!
Malcolm X
#50. 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
#51. If we are extremists, then we are not ashamed of it, for the conditions that our people suffer are extreme, and extreme illness can not be cured with moderate medicine
Malcolm X
#52. America is such a paradoxical society, hypocritically paradoxical, that if you don't have some humor, you'll crack up.
Malcolm X
#53. Until the image of the black man in the mind of the black man has been changed, there will always be delinquency, parental and juvenile. The idea is not to change the attitude of the white man to the black man but to change the attitude of the black man to himself.
Malcolm X
#54. Never ask a woman about other men.
Either she'll tell you a lie, and you still won't know, or if she tells you the truth, you might not have wanted to hear it in the first place.
Malcolm X
#55. You show me a capitalist, and I'll show you a bloodsucker
Malcolm X
#56. A new world order is in the making, and it is up to us to prepare ourselves that we may take our rightful place in it.
Malcolm X
#57. If you stick a knife nine inches into my back and pull it out three inches, that is not progress. Even if you pull it all the way out, that is not progress. Progress is healing the wound, and America hasn't even begun to pull out the knife.
Malcolm X
#58. I don't even call it violence when it's in self defense; I call it intelligence.
Malcolm X
#59. I'm speaking from personal experience when I say of any black man who conks today, or any white-wigged black woman, that if they gave the brains in their heads just half as much attention as they do their hair, they would be a thousand times better off.
Malcolm X
#60. We are fighting for the right to live as free humans in this society. In fact, we are actually fighting for rights that are even greater than civil rights and that is human rights.
Malcolm X
#61. 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
#62. Hatred and anger are powerless when met with kindness.
Malcolm X
#63. The Negro revolution is controlled by foxy white liberals, by the Government itself. But the Black Revolution is controlled only by God.
Malcolm X
#64. They cripple the bird's wing, and then condemn it for not flying as fast as they.
Malcolm X
#65. Mankind's history has proved from one era to another that the true criterion of leadership is spiritual. Men are attracted by spirit. By power, men are forced. Love is engendered by spirit. By power, anxieties are created.
Malcolm X
#66. I am a Muslim and ... my religion makes me be against all forms of racism. It keeps me from judging any man by the color of his skin. It teaches me to judge him by his deeds .
Malcolm X
#67. A ballot is like a bullet. You don't throw your ballots until you see a target, and if that target is not in reach, keep your ballot in your pocket.
Malcolm X
#68. Brothers and sisters, friends and enemies: I just can't believe that everyone in here is a friend and I don't want to leave anybody out.
Malcolm X
#69. If you're born in America with a black skin, you're born in prison, and the masses of black people in America today are beginning to regard our plight or predicament in this society as one of a prison inmate.
Malcolm X
#70. It isn't the American white man who is a racist, but it's the American political, economic and social atmosphere that automatically nourishes a racist psychology in the white man.
Malcolm X
#71. The black nation of Egypt is the only country that has a science named after its culture: Egyptology
Malcolm X
#72. People involved in a revolution don't become part of the system; they destroy the system ... The Negro revolution is no revolution because it condemns the system and then asks the system it has condemned to accept them ...
Malcolm X
#73. I am not a racist in any form whatsoever. I don't believe in any form of discrimination or segregation.
Malcolm X
#74. No religion will ever make me forget the condition of our people in this country ... No God, no religion, no nothing will make me forget it until it stops, until it's elimitnated. I want to make that point clear ...
Malcolm X
#75. The collective white man had acted like a devil in virtually every contact he had with the world's collective non-white man.
Malcolm X
#76. 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
#77. Envy blinds men and makes it impossible for them to think clearly.
Malcolm X
#78. Betty's a good Muslim woman and wife. I don't imagine many other women might put up with the way I am. Awakening this brainwashed black man and telling this arrogant, devilish white man the truth about himself, Betty understands, is a full-time job
Malcolm X
#79. Every morning when I wake up, now, I regard it as having another borrowed day.
Malcolm X
#80. I have wife who understands, or even if she doesn't she at least pretends.
Malcolm X
#81. Why am I as I am? To understand that of any person, his whole life, from
Birth must be reviewed. All of our experiences fuse into our personality. Everything that ever happened to us is an ingredient.
Malcolm X
#82. The American Negro has no conception of the hundreds of millions of other non-whites' concern for him: he has no conception of their feeling of brotherhood for and with him.
Malcolm X
#83. Everything that came out of Europe, every blue-eyed thing, is already an American. And as long as you and I have been over here, we aren't Americans yet.
Malcolm X
#84. One day, may we all meet together in the light of understanding.
Malcolm X
#85. Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or who says it.
Malcolm X
#86. Any number of my former brothers felt they would make heroes of themselves in the Nation of Islam if they killed me ... I knew that no one would kill you quicker than Muslim if he felt that's what Allah wanted him to do.
Malcolm X
#87. Ten guards and the warden couldn't have torn me out of those books. Months passed without even thinking about being imprisoned ... I had never been so truly free in my life.
Malcolm X
#88. WHO TAUGHT YOU TO HATE THE TEXTURE OF YOUR HAIR?
WHO TAUGHT YOU TO HATE THE COLOUR OF YOUR SKIN? ...
Malcolm X
#89. So over you is the greatest enemy a man can have and that is fear. I know some of you are afraid to listen to the truth-you have been raised on fear and lies. But I am going to preach to you the truth until you are free of that fear ...
Malcolm X
#90. It's impossible for a white person to believe in capitalism and not believe in racism.
Malcolm X
#91. She threatened a Negro man who worked for her father that if he didn't take (have sex with) her she would swear he tried rape.
He had no choice, except that he quit working for them. And from then until she finished high school,
she managed it several times with other Negroes
Malcolm X
#92. Only a fool would let his enemy teach his children.
Malcolm X
#93. He said, one time, that no true leader burdened his followers with a greater load than they could carry, and no true leader sets too fast a pace for his follows to keep up.
Malcolm X
#94. Aside from the basic African dialects, I would try to learn Chinese, because it looks as if Chinese will be the most powerful political language of the future.
Malcolm X
#95. Where the really sincere white people have got to do their 'proving' of themselves is not among the black victims, but out on the battle lines of where America's racism really is - and that's in their own home communities.
Malcolm X
#96. What we need to do in the community, and in the city, and in the state. We need to stop airing our differences in front of the white man. Put the white man out of our meetings, number one, and then sit down and talk shop with each other. [That's] all you gotta do.
Malcolm X
#97. But they don't use law-they use law for their interests. They don't go by law, international, federal, local-nothing! They go by whatever is expedient to protect the interests that are at stake.
Malcolm X
#98. America in its entirety is segregationist and is racist. It's more camouflaged in the north, but it's the same thing.
Malcolm X
#99. To have once been a criminal is no disgrace. To remain a criminal is the disgrace
Malcolm X
#100. A man without any history is like a tree without roots
Malcolm X
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