Malcolm X On Quotes

#1. We're not Americans, we're Africans who happen to be in America. We were kidnapped and brought here against our will from Africa. We didn't land on Plymouth Rock - that rock landed on us.

Malcolm X

#2. You can cuss out colonialism, imperialism, and all other kinds of ism, but it's hard for you to cuss that dollarism. When they drop those dollars on you, your soul goes.

Malcolm X

#3. 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

#4. This was my first lesson about gambling: if you see somebody winning all the time, he isn't gambling, he's cheating. Later on in life, if I were continuously losing in any gambling situation, I would watch very closely.

Malcolm X

#5. I'm not going to sit at your table and watch you eat, with nothing on my plate, and call myself a diner. Sitting at the table doesn't make you a diner.

Malcolm X

#6. You spend so much time barking up the civil-rights tree, you don't even know there's a human-rights tree on the same floor.

Malcolm X

#7. We didn't land on plymouth rock, Plymouth rock landed on us.

Malcolm X

#8. Read absolutely everything you get your hands on because you'll never know where you'll get an idea from ...

Malcolm X

#9. If we became students of Malcolm X, we would not have young black men out there killing each other like they're killing each other now. Young black men would not be impregnating young black women at the rate going on now. We'd not have the drugs we have now, or the alcoholism.

Spike Lee

#10. 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 next time.

Malcolm X

#11. Malcolm X recognized that difference contains its own value, and that the struggle must be to advance that value. Martin Luther King is admired by everyone, he wants everyone to join together, but this idea that you should let them hit you on the other side of your face, this makes no sense to me.

Teju Cole

#12. We declare our right on this earth ... to be a human being, to be respected as a human being, to be given the rights of a human being in this society, on this earth, in this day, which we intend to bring into existence by any means necessary.

Malcolm X

#13. The whites of the younger generation, in the colleges and universities, will see the handwriting on the wall and many of them will turn to the spiritual path of truth.

Malcolm X

#14. Truth is on the side of the oppressed.

Malcolm X

#15. 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

#16. A man curses because he doesn't have the words to say what's on his mind.

Malcolm X

#17. Black Jesus hangs from the cross in a painting on the hallway wall, and Malcolm X holds a shotgun in a photograph next to him.

Angie Thomas

#18. Between what is going on in Iraq and Mumia being locked up unjustly, things going on in Israel, Palestine, we don't really have anyone right now like Gandhi. We don't have anyone like Martin Luther King or Malcolm X anymore. It's really a reference to a vision of hope, like someone like Gandhi.

Vinnie Paz

#19. In Singapore, Malcolm X type of activity would be extremely difficult because the government can be very harsh on lawbreakers.

Ian McKellen

#20. If someone puts their hands on you make sure they never put their hands on anybody else again.

Malcolm X

#21. 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

#22. Revolution is always based on land. Revolution is never based on begging somebody for an integrated cup of coffee.

Malcolm X

#23. In my 39 years on this earth, the Holy city of Makka had been the first time I had ever stood before the Creator of all and felt like a complete human being

Malcolm X

#24. Standing there by that Harvard window, I silently vowed to Allah that I never would forget that any
wings I wore had been put on by the religion of Islam. That fact I never have forgotten ... not for
one second.

Malcolm X

#25. 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

#26. Someone has to pay. Somewhere, somehow, someone has to pay. When a snake bites your children, you don't go and look for the snake that has blood on it's jaws, any old snake will do. Any old snake will do!

Malcolm X

#27. New book on Malcolm X says we don't know how he was killed. Want to bring in the FBI. Maybe they were in already.

Mort Sahl

#28. 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

#29. Revolution is based on land. Land is the basis of all independence. Land is the basis of freedom, justice, and equality ...

Malcolm X

#30. 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

#31. 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

#32. 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

#33. 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

#34. If, if a white man puts his arm around me voluntarily, that's brotherhood. But if you - if you hold a gun on him and make him embrace me and pretend to be friendly or brotherly toward me, then that's not brotherhood, that's hypocrisy.

Malcolm X

#35. 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

#36. I'm a field Negro. The masses are the field Negroes. When they see this man's house on fire, you don't hear these little Negroes talking about 'our government is in trouble'. They say, 'The government is in trouble.'

Malcolm X

#37. It's like the Negro in America seeing the white man win all the time.
He's a professional gambler; he has all the cards and the odds stacked on his side, and he has always dealt to our people from the bottom of the deck.

Malcolm X

#38. Everybody shall be accepted no matter what they stand for, you are not always going to agree on their faith.

Malcolm X

#39. Time is on the side of the oppressed today, it's against the oppressor. Truth is on the side of the oppressed today, it's against the oppressor. You don't need anything else.

Malcolm X

#40. I am a Muslim, because it's a religion that teaches you an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. It teaches you to respect everybody, and treat everybody right. But it also teaches you if someone steps on your toe, chop off their foot. And I carry my religious axe with me all the time.

Malcolm X

#41. 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

#42. That's not a chip on my shoulder, that's your foot on my neck.

Malcolm X

#43. Be peaceful, be courteous, obey the law, respect everyone; but if someone puts his hand on you, send him to the cemetery.

Malcolm X

#44. We are not anti-white. But we don't have time for the white man. The white man is on top already, the white man is the boss already ... he has first-class citizenship already. So you are wasting your time talking to the white man. We are working on our own people.

Malcolm X

#45. I don't advocate violence; but if a man steps on my toes, I'll step on his ...

Malcolm X

#46. Malcolm X made me very strong at a time I needed to understand what I was angry about. He had peace in his heart. He exerted a big influence on me.

Lena Horne

#47. Power in defense of freedom is greater than power on behalf of tyranny and oppression.

Malcolm X

#48. Sitting at the table doesn't make you a diner, unless you eat 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

#49. Let me tell you something - staying up all night working on a paper about Malcolm X ain't got shit on staying up all night wondering if you will run out of money.

Alida Nugent

#50. These negroes aren't asking for no nation. They wanna crawl back on the plantation.

Malcolm X