Top 100 Quotes About Malcolm X
#1. 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
#2. If you blink, you will miss me, but I am in 'Malcolm X.'
Martin Donovan
#3. The rage was in me, and if it wasn't for the rage, then I wouldn't know how to be calm. They feed off of each other. Just like when Malcolm X fed off Martin Luther King. They needed each other.
Gary Sheffield
#4. Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, the Kennedys - there is always a pattern where a piece of information is destroyed, in which a witness is killed. It's so predictable, you can go back and look up old cases.
Mae Brussell
#5. My dad always associated information with liberation. He was very much in that Malcolm X tradition.
Ta-Nehisi Coates
#6. I always tell my students that Malcolm X came both to his spirituality and to his consciousness as a thinker when he had solitude to read. Unfortunately, tragically, like so many young black males, that solitude only came in prison.
Bell Hooks
#7. Everyone who ever did anything revolutionary was just an eighteen-year-old kid once. George Washington, Malcolm X, Che Guevara, Nelson Mandela ... Social status is just a social construct, the primary function of which is to keep regular people oppressed and rebels in line.
Matthew Quick
#8. Malcolm X found the language that communicated across the board, from college professor to floor sweeper, all at the same time, without demeaning the intellect of either.
John Henrik Clarke
#9. The poor black people in it make the black people in Gone With the Wind look like Malcolm X.
Ben Stein
#10. People sometimes forget all the films that we've done. They remember the likes of 'Malcolm X' and 'Do the Right Thing.' But I've been working since 1986. From the beginning, I was determined to not just be a flash in the pan. I've got to keep up with Woody Allen. He's lapping me.
Spike Lee
#11. Malcolm X and Edmund Burke shared an appreciation of this important insight, this painful truth
that the state wants men to be weak and timid, not strong and proud.
Thomas Szasz
#13. We look at the legacy of Frederick Douglass and Ida B. Wells and Ella Baker, Malcolm X and Martin King. We have, and part of the struggle now in the age of [Barack] Obama is how do we keep alive the legacy of Martin King?
Cornel West
#14. As testimony to the power of redemption and the force of human personality, the autobiography of Malcolm X is a revelation.
Malcolm X
#15. 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
#16. If they had not murdered Malcolm X, there probably never would have been a Black Panther Party.
Bobby Seale
#18. People look at me like I should have been like Malcolm X or Martin Luther King or Rosa Parks. I should have seen life like that and stay out of trouble, and don't do this and don't do that. But it's hard to live up to some people's expectations.
Rodney King
#19. 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
#20. Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammad's message made a whole lot of people feel whole again, human being again. Some of them came out and found a new meaning to their manhood and their womanhood.
John Henrik Clarke
#21. I'm going to have to call up Spike Lee. I did a cameo for him in 'Malcolm X,' and I'm trying to get him to do my life story and the history of the Black Panther Party.
Bobby Seale
#22. It's ironic when black non-Muslims say Islam is not a religion that uplifts black people when two of the most celebrated black heroes in recent history were both Muslim; Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali.
Habeeb Akande
#23. With guys I revere, like Marcus Garvey or Malcolm X, their look is less about style than purpose and the expression of beauty. It wasn't just about being noticed, you know?
Mos Def
#24. 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
#25. I'd been very partial to Malcolm X, particularly his self-help teachings.
Clarence Thomas
#27. 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
#28. My influences in this world have always been Crazy Horse and Malcolm X, my overall influences. But I was influenced by rock n' roll, blues, and country music. I was influenced by singers.
John Trudell
#29. Because wherever I am today, I still owe it to God and I owe it to two men - the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X and of course, two very special women, my mother and my wife.
Louis Farrakhan
#30. I was about 13 or 14 when I heard Malcolm X's speech 'Message to the Grass Roots.'
Ta-Nehisi Coates
#31. I love 'The Autobiography of Malcolm X.' That was like the only black book we read in high school.
Junot Diaz
#32. 'Malcolm X' was impressionable for me as a kid.
Ron Funches
#33. Malcolm X raised my consciousness about myself and my people and other people more than any person I know. I knew him before he became Malcolm X.
Lena Horne
#34. In 1974, when I started working with the material that became 'Horses,' a lot of our great voices had died. We'd lost Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin, and people like Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X.
Patti Smith
#35. Not everyone likes sports. Gandhi and Malcolm X come to mind.
Jay Mohr
#36. I knew that Malcolm X had an almost fanatical obsession about time. "I have less patience with someone who doesn't wear a watch than with anyone else , for this type is not time-conscious," he had once told me.
Malcolm X
#37. I drive two black cars, I named em Malcolm X and Martin Luther.
Drake
#38. 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
#39. Malcolm X was the first political person in this country that I really identified with. If he had lived and not been purged, I probably would have joined the Muslims.
Huey Newton
#40. If a man like Malcolm X could change and repudiate racism, if I myself and other former Muslims can change, if young whites can change, then there is hope for America.
Eldridge Cleaver
#41. 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
#42. In Singapore, Malcolm X type of activity would be extremely difficult because the government can be very harsh on lawbreakers.
Ian McKellen
#43. Ali ... we should have gone to see that movie. Malcolm X was another one.
Cicely Tyson
#44. Don't condemn if you see a person has a dirty glass of water, just show them the clean glass of water that you have. When they inspect it, you won't have to say that yours is better.
-said by Elijah Muhammad to Malcolm X
Malcolm X
#45. When I was teaching in the 1960s in Boston, there was a great deal of hope in the air. Martin Luther King Jr. was alive, Malcolm X was alive; great, great leaders were emerging from the southern freedom movement.
Jonathan Kozol
#46. I grew up in the sixties watching B.B. King and Tito Puente and Miles Davis and Coltrane, everybody, Marvin Gaye, Jimi. And at the same time, with my left eye I was watching Dolores Huerta, Cesar Chavez, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Mother Teresa.
Carlos Santana
#47. All the working-class people could feel a Malcolm X. They could hear Malcolm X, and two weeks later they could whisper back what he said. Verbatim. They could remember the way he put it, and he put it so well.
John Henrik Clarke
#48. When Malcolm X was assassinated I was working at the Apollo. They brought his body to the Unity Funeral Home, which was around the corner.
Etta James
#49. The ability to read awoke inside of me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive.
Malcolm X
#50. 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
#51. 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
#52. 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
#53. No, there is plenty wrong with Negroes. They have no society. They're robots, automatons. No minds of their own. I hate to say that about us, but it's the truth. They are a black body with a white brain.
Malcolm X
#54. 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
#55. Our objective is complete freedom, justice and equality by any means necessary.
Malcolm X
#56. Times change so quickly that if you and I don't keep up with the times, we'll find ourselves with an umbrella in our hand, over our head, when the sun is out. Or we'll find ourselves standing in the rain, with the umbrella inside the door.
Malcolm X
#57. Revolution is based on land. Land is the basis of all independence. Land is the basis of freedom, justice, and equality ...
Malcolm X
#58. Right now, in every big city ghetto, tens of thousands of yesterday's and today's school dropouts are keeping body and soul together by some form of hustling in the same way I did.
Malcolm X
#59. I'm for truth, no matter who tells it..
Malcolm X
#60. The junkie can never start to cure himself until he recognizes his true condition.
Malcolm X
#61. A woman should occasionally be babied enough to show her the man had affection, but beyond that she should be treated firmly. These tough women said that it worked with them.
All women, by their nature, are fragile and weak: they are attracted to the male in whom they see strength.
Malcolm X
#62. A man who stands for nothing will fall for anything.
Malcolm X
#63. 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
#64. Under the pitiful misapprehension that it would make them "better," these Hill Negroes were breaking their backs trying to imitate white people.
Malcolm X
#65. 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
#66. Any time you beg another man to set you free, you will never be free. Freedom is something that you have to do for yourselves.
Malcolm X
#67. 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
#68. You can't legislate good will - that comes through education.
Malcolm X
#69. You can't have capitalism without racism.
Malcolm X
#70. They tell us we are all citizens, that we were born in this country. Well, a cat can have kittens in the oven, but that doesn't make them biscuits!
Malcolm X
#71. I imagine that one of the biggest troubles with colleges is there are too many distractions, too much panty-raiding, fraternities, and boola-boola and all of that.
Malcolm X
#72. We black men have a hard enough time in our own struggle for justice, and already have enough enemies as it is, to make the drastic mistake of attacking each other and adding more weight to an already unbearable load.
Malcolm X
#73. 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
#74. 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
#75. In all our deeds, the proper value and respect for time determines success or failure.
Malcolm X
#76. I believe in the brotherhood of man, all men, but I don't believe in brotherhood with anybody who doesn't want brotherhood with me. I believe in treating people right, but I'm not going to waste my time trying to treat somebody right who doesn't know how to return the treatment
Malcolm X
#77. You can't hate the roots of a tree and not hate the tree.
Malcolm X
#78. 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
#79. As bad as I was, as much trouble and worry as I caused my mother, I loved her.
Malcolm X
#81. 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
#83. I believe in human rights for everyone, and none of us is qualified to judge each other and that none of us should therefore have that authority.
Malcolm X
#84. We are nonviolent with people who are nonviolent with us.
Malcolm X
#85. It is only after the deepest darkness that the greatest joy can come
Malcolm X
#86. I'm someone who can provide an intellectual framework, but I can't tell people who are trying to sell Product X how to do that because I don't know, and I would be faking it if I attempted to step into that role.
Malcolm Gladwell
#87. Always, every now and then, I had given her a hard time, just to keep her in line. Every once in a while a woman seems to need, in fact wants this too.
Malcolm X
#88. The zionist argument to justify Israel's present occupation of Arab Palestine has no intelligent or legal basis in history.
Malcolm X
#89. 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
#90. 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
#91. I believe it's a crime for anyone who is being brutalized to continue to accept that brutality without doing something to defend himself.
Malcolm X
#92. It is incorrect to classify the revolt of the Negro as simply a radical conflict of black against white or as a purely American problem. Rather, we are today seeing a global rebellion of the oppressed against the oppressor, the exploited against the exploiter.
Malcolm X
#93. Any time you see someone more successful than you are, they are doing something you aren't.
Malcolm X
#94. A segregated school system produces children who, when they graduate, they do with crippled minds.
Malcolm X
#95. 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
#96. America's most dangerous and threatening black man is the one who has been kept sealed up by the Northerner in the black ghettos - the Northern white power structure's system to keep talking democracy while keeping the black man out of sight somewhere, around the corner.
Malcolm X
#97. The White man pays Reverend Martin Luther King so that Martin Luther King can keep the Negro defenseless.
Malcolm X
#98. New York white youth were killing victims; that was a 'sociological' problem. But when black youth killed somebody, the power structure was looking to hang somebody.
Malcolm X
#99. My father didn't know his real name. My father got his name from his grandfather and he got his name from his grandfather and he got it from the slave master.
Malcolm X
#100. The political philosophy of black nationalism means that the black man should control the politics and the politicians in his own community; no more.
Malcolm X
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