"Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today." ~ Malcolm X
"We need more light about each other. Light creates understanding, understanding creates love, love creates patience, and patience creates unity." ~ Malcolm X
"If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing." ~ 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
"A wise man can play the part of a clown, but a clown can't play the part of a wise man." ~ Malcolm X
"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
"Be peaceful, be courteous, obey the law, respect everyone; but if someone puts his hand on you, send him to the cemetery." ~ 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
"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
"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
"I believe in human beings, and that all human beings should be respected as such, regardless of their color." ~ 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
"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
"You can't separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom." ~ Malcolm X
"Just as a tree without roots is dead, a people without history or cultural roots also becomes a dead people." ~ Malcolm X
"Education is an important element in the struggle for human rights. It is the means to help our children and thereby increase self-respect. Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today." ~ Malcolm X
"The mother is the first teacher of the child. The message she gives that child, that child gives to the world." ~ Malcolm X
"The greatest mistake of the movement has been trying to organize a sleeping people around specific goals. You have to wake the people up first, then you'll get action." ~ Malcolm X
"Read absolutely everything you get your hands on because you'll never know where you'll get an idea from." ~ Malcolm X
"If you form the habit of taking what someone else says about a thing without checking it out for yourself, you'll find that other people will have you hating your friends and loving your enemies." ~ Malcolm X
"The most disrespected person in America is the black woman. The most unprotected person in America is the black woman. The most neglected person in America is the black woman." ~ Malcolm X
"Only those who have already experienced a revolution within themselves can reach out effectively to help others." ~ Malcolm X
"Don't be in a hurry to condemn because he doesn't do what you do or think as you think or as fast. There was a time when you didn't know what you know today." ~ Malcolm X
"America's greatest crime against the black man was not slavery or lynching, but that he was taught to wear a mask of self-hate and self-doubt." ~ Malcolm X
"There can be no black-white unity until there is first some black unity... We cannot think of uniting with others, until after we have first united among ourselves. We cannot think of being acceptable to others until we have first proven acceptable to ourselves." ~ Malcolm X
"When you hear me say "by any means necessary," I mean exactly that. I believe in anything that is necessary to correct unjust conditions-political, economic, social, physical, anything that is necessary." ~ Malcolm X
"They cripple the bird's wing, and then condemn it for not flying as fast as they." ~ 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
"You don't have a revolution in which you love your enemy, and you don't have a revolution in which you are begging the system of exploitation to integrate you into it. Revolutions overturn systems. Revolutions destroy systems." ~ Malcolm X
"The mental flexibility of the wise man permits him to keep an open mind and enables him to readjust himself whenever it becomes necessary for a change." ~ Malcolm X
"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
"Usually when people are sad, they don't do anything. They just cry over their condition. But when they get angry, they bring about a change." ~ Malcolm X
"If you're not ready to die for it, put the word 'freedom' out of your vocabulary." ~ Malcolm X
"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
"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
"We cannot think of being acceptable to others until we have first proven acceptable to ourselves." ~ Malcolm X
"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
"Anytime anyone is enslaved or in any way deprived of his liberty, that person, as a human being, as far as I'm concerned he is justified to resort to whatever methods necessary to bring about his liberty again." ~ Malcolm X
"The only persons who really changed history are those who changed men's thinking about themselves." ~ Malcolm X
"Daring to reach, to climb, to crawl, to scratch, to get back up when you've been knocked down, to push forward - ever forward - to forgive. It means sacrificing everything if necessary, to carve out a place for your own existence. It means living." ~ Malcolm X
"What is a Dixiecrat? A Democrat. A Dixiecrat is nothing but a Democrat in disguise." ~ Malcolm X
"Armed with the knowledge of our past, we can with confidence charter a course for our future. Culture is an indispensable weapon in the freedom struggle. We must take hold of it and forge the future with the past." ~ Malcolm X
"I want to be remembered as someone who was sincere. Even if I made mistakes, they were made in sincerity. If I was wrong, I was wrong in sincerity." ~ Malcolm X
"This religion (Islam) recognizes all men as brothers. It accepts all human beings as equals before God, and as equal members in the Human Family of Mankind." ~ Malcolm X
"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
"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
"My Alma mater was books, a good library... I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity." ~ Malcolm X
"Revolution is based on land. Land is the basis of all independence. Land is the basis of freedom, justice, and equality." ~ Malcolm X
"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
"Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you're a man, you take it." ~ Malcolm X
"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
"It is only after the deepest darkness that the greatest light can come; it is only after extreme grief that the greatest joy can come." ~ Malcolm X
"Reform is for people who have government connections, revolution is for the people!" ~ Malcolm X
"An English writer telephoned me from London, asking questions. One was, ‘What’s your alma mater?’ I told him, ‘Books." ~ Malcolm X
"The only time the white man is brotherly toward you is when he can use you, when he can exploit you, when he will oppress you, when you will submit to him." ~ Malcolm X
"I, for one, will join in with anyone -- I don't care what color you are -- as long as you want to change this miserable condition that exists on this earth." ~ Malcolm X
"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
"You get your freedom by letting your enemy know that you'll do anything to get it. Then you'll get it. It's the only way you'll get it." ~ Malcolm X
"I don't even call it violence when it's in self defense; I call it intelligence." ~ Malcolm X
"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
"It’ll be the ballot or it’ll be the bullet. It’ll be liberty or it’ll be death. And if you’re not ready to pay that price don’t use the word freedom in your vocabulary." ~ Malcolm X
"As long as you are convinced you have never done anything, you can never do anything." ~ 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
"The Negro revolution is controlled by foxy white liberals, by the Government itself. But the Black Revolution is controlled only by God." ~ Malcolm X
"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
"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
"They're not leading our people toward any kind of independence, but they're using their positions and their education and their talent to exploit our people worse than the slave master did during slavery." ~ Malcolm X
"I don't favor violence. If we could bring about recognition and respect of our people by peaceful means, well and good. Everybody would like to reach his objectives peacefully. But I'm also a realist. The only people in this country who are asked to be nonviolent are black people." ~ Malcolm X
"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
"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
"The Constitution of the United States of America clearly affirms the right of every American citizen to bear arms. And as Americans, we will not give up a single right guaranteed under the Constitution." ~ Malcolm X
"The zionist argument to justify Israel's present occupation of Arab Palestine has no intelligent or legal basis in history." ~ Malcolm X
"Can you accuse me, if a man is putting a rope around my neck, of being violent, when I violently struggle against this lyncher to try and keep him from putting a rope around my innocent neck? Why, you'd be insane to cause me - to call me violent." ~ Malcolm X
"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
"Stumbling isn't falling." ~ Malcolm X
"Of all our studies, history is best qualified to reward our research. And when you see that you've got problems, all you have to do is examine the historic method used all over the world by others who have problems similar to yours. And once you see how they got theirs straight, then you know how you can get yours straight." ~ Malcolm X
"And just because you have colleges and universities doesn't mean you have education." ~ Malcolm X
"Allah always gives you signs, when you are with Him, that He is with you." ~ Malcolm X
"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
"How can anyone be against love?" ~ Malcolm X
"To have once been a criminal is no disgrace. To remain a criminal is the disgrace" ~ Malcolm X
"When a person places the proper value on freedom, there is nothing under the sun that he will not do to acquire that freedom. Whenever you hear a man saying he wants freedom, but in the next breath he is going to tell you what he won't do to get it, or what he doesn't believe in doing in order to get it, he doesn't believe in freedom. A man who believes in freedom will do anything under the sun to acquire... or preserve his freedom." ~ Malcolm X
"The religion of Islam actually restores one's human feelings, human rights, human incentives, human, his talent." ~ Malcolm X
"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
"Ignorance of each other is what has made unity impossible in the past. Therefore we need enlightenment. We need more light about each other. Light creates understanding, understanding creates love, love creates patience, and patience creates unity. Once we have more knowledge (light) about each other, we will stop condemning each other and a United front will be brought about." ~ Malcolm X
"Growing is the result of learning." ~ Malcolm X
"Never allow your enemies to educate your children." ~ Malcolm X
"You can't hate the roots of a tree and not hate the tree." ~ Malcolm X
"American civil rights leader, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? Lynching is a murder. For the past four hundred years our people have been lynched physically, but now it's done politically. We're lynched politically, we're lynched economically, we're lynched socially, we're lynched in every way that you can imagine." ~ 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
"For 12 long years I lived within the narrow-minded confines of the 'straightjacket world' created by my strong belief that Elijah Muhammad was a messenger direct from God Himself, and my faith in what I now see to be a pseudo-religious philosophy that he preaches.... I shall never rest until I have undone the harm I did to so many well-meaning, innocent Negroes who through my own evangelistic zeal now believe in him even more fanatically and more blindly than I did." ~ 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
"We're all in the same boat and we all are going to catch the same hell from the same man." ~ Malcolm X
"I remember one night at Muzdalifa with nothing but the sky overhead I lay awake amid sleeping Muslim brothers and I learned that pilgrims from every land--every color, and class, and rank; high officials and the beggar alike--all snored in the same language." ~ Malcolm X
"I don't care how nice one is to you, the thing you must always remember is that almost never does he really see you as he sees himself, as he sees his own kind." ~ Malcolm X
"Of all our studies, it is history that is best qualified to reward our research." ~ Malcolm X
"If someone puts their hands on you make sure they never put their hands on anybody else again." ~ Malcolm X
"The white man is not inherently evil, but America's racist society influences him to act evilly. The society has produced and nourishes a psychology which brings out the lowest, most base part of human beings." ~ Malcolm X
"I don't advocate violence; but if a man steps on my toes, I'll step on his." ~ Malcolm X
"Despite my firm convictions, I have always been a man who tries to face facts, and to accept the reality of life as new experience and new knowledge unfolds. I have always kept an open mind, a flexibility that must go hand in hand with every form of the intelligent search for truth." ~ Malcolm X
"Anytime you tell a man to turn the other cheek or to be nonviolent in the face of a violent enemy, you're making that man defenseless. You're robbing him of his God-given right to defend himself." ~ Malcolm X
"Who taught you to hate the color of your skin? Who taught you to hate the texture of your hair? Who taught you to hate the shape of your nose and the shape of your lips? Who taught you to hate yourself from the top of your head to the soles of your feet?" ~ Malcolm X
"Any time you find the government involved in a conspiracy to violate the citizenship or the civil rights of a people, then you are wasting your time going to that government expecting redress. Instead, you have to take that government to the World Court and accuse it of genocide and all of the other crimes that it is guilty of today." ~ Malcolm X
"When we send our children to school, they learn nothing about us other than we used to be cotton pickers. Why, your grandfather was Nat Turner; your grandfather was Toussaint L'Ouverture; your grandfather was Hannibal. It was your grandfather's hands who forged civilization and it was your grandmother's hands who rocked the cradle of civilization. But the textbooks tell our children nothing." ~ Malcolm X
"My beliefs are now one hundred percent against racism and segregation in any form and I also believe that we don't judge a person by the color of his skin but rather by his deeds." ~ Malcolm X
"I for one believe that if you give people a thorough understanding of what confronts them and the basic causes that produce it, they'll create their own program, and when the people create a program, you get action." ~ Malcolm X
"To me, political action involves making the politician who represents us know that he either produces or he is out, and he's out one way or another." ~ Malcolm X
"True Islam taught me that it takes all of the religious, political, economic, psychological, and racial ingredients, or characteristics, to make the Human Family and the Human Society complete." ~ Malcolm X
"If you are in a country that is progressive, the woman is progressive. If you're in a country that reflects the consciousness toward the importance of education, it's because the woman is aware of the importance of education. But in every backward country you'll find the women are backward, and in every country where education is not stressed its because the women don't have education." ~ Malcolm X
"If all the white people who claim they don't hate us would ever get together and do something to the whites who claim they hate us, we'd see some action. Talk is cheap, if white people didn't want to have a South African situation ... there'd be none. If white people in America didn't want segregation, there'd be none ... it is the man who allows him to lynch who is never seen." ~ Malcolm X
"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
"... Any county's moral strength, or its moral weakness, is quickly measurable by the street attire and attitude of its women - especially its young women. Wherever ... spiritual values have been submerged, if not destroyed, by an emphasis upon ... material things, invariably the women reflect it." ~ Malcolm X
"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
"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
"Anybody who rapes, and plunders, and enslaves, and steals, and drops hell bombs on people... anybody who does these things is nothing but a devil." ~ Malcolm X
"A ballot is like a bullet. You don't throw your ballots until you see a target, and if that target is not within your reach, keep your ballot in your pocket." ~ Malcolm X
"If the Emancipation Proclamation was authentic, you wouldn't have a race problem." ~ Malcolm X
"When I was in Mecca I noticed that their, they had no color problem. That they had people there whose eyes were blue and people there whose eyes were black, people whose skin was white, people whose skin was black, people whose hair was blond, people whose hair was black, from the whitest white person to the blackest black person." ~ Malcolm X
"What you and I need to do is learn to forget our differences. When we come together, we don't come together as Baptists or Methodists. You don't catch hell 'cause you're a Baptist, and you don't catch hell 'cause you're a Methodist... You don't catch hell because you're a Democrat or a Republican. You don't catch hell because you're a Mason or an Elk. And you sure don't catch hell 'cause you're an American; 'cause if you was an American, you wouldn't catch no hell. You catch hell 'cause you're a Black man. You catch hell, all of us catch hell, for the same reason." ~ Malcolm X
"We are nonviolent with people who are nonviolent with us." ~ Malcolm X
"Who taught you to hate yourself?" ~ 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
"It's hard for anyone intelligent to be nonviolent. Everything in the universe does something when you start playing with his life, except the American Negro. He lays down and says, 'Beat me, daddy.'" ~ Malcolm X
"The greatest weapon the colonial powers have used in the past against our people has always been his ability to divide and conquer. If I take my hand and slap you, it might sting you because these digits are separated. But all I have to do to put you back in your place is bring those digits together." ~ Malcolm X
"Everybody shall be accepted no matter what they stand for, you are not always going to agree on their faith." ~ Malcolm X
"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
"The white man supports Reverend Martin Luther King, subsidizes Reverend Martin Luther King, so that Reverend Martin Luther King can continue to teach the Negroes to be defenseless - that's what you mean by nonviolent - be defenseless in the face of one of the most cruel beasts that has ever taken people into captivity - that's this American white man, and they have proved it throughout the country by the police dogs and the police clubs." ~ Malcolm X
"Any time you see someone more successful than you are, they are doing something you aren't." ~ Malcolm X
"I'm for truth, no matter who tells it." ~ Malcolm X
"The Chinese in this country aren't asking for integration." ~ Malcolm X
"Never have I witnessed such sincere hospitality and the overwhelming spirit of true brotherhood as is practiced by people of all colours and races here in this ancient Holy Land, the home of Abraham, Muhammad, and all the other prophets of the Holy Scriptures. For the past week, I have been utterly speechless and spellbound by the graciousness I see displayed all around me by people of all colours." ~ Malcolm X
"When someone sticks a knife six inches into your back, and then pulls it out two inches and claims he's doing you a favor, don't believe him." ~ Malcolm X
"Anytime you live in a society supposedly based upon law and it doesn't enforce its own laws because the color of a man's skin happens to be wrong, then I say those people are justified to resort to any means necessary to bring about justice when the government can't give them justice." ~ Malcolm X
"I think that Abraham Lincoln probably did more to trick negroes than any other man in history." ~ Malcolm X
"America needs to understand Islam, because this is the one religion that erases from its society the race problem." ~ Malcolm X
"Anytime you have to rely upon your enemy for a job you're in bad shape." ~ Malcolm X
"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
"In order for a man to really understand himself he must be part of a nation; he must have some land of his own, a God of his own, a language of his own. Most of all he must have love and devotion for his own kind." ~ Malcolm X
"I see America through the eyes of the victim. I don’t see any American dream; I see an American nightmare." ~ Malcolm X
"The most unprotected person in America is the black woman." ~ Malcolm X
"Negroes just can't judge each other according to color, because we are all colors, all complexions." ~ Malcolm X
"The black man in North America was economically sick and that was evident in one simple fact: as a consumer, he got less than his share, and as a producer gave least. The black American today shows us the perfect parasite image - the black tick under the delusion that he is progressing because he rides on the udder of the fat, three-stomached cow that is white America." ~ Malcolm X
"It's liberty or it's death. It's freedom for everybody or freedom for nobody." ~ Malcolm X
"Culture is an indispensable weapon in the freedom struggle." ~ Malcolm X
"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 and his conscious behavior. And it teaches me to be for the rights of all human beings, but especially the Afro-American human being, because my religion is a natural religion, and the first law of nature is self-preservation." ~ Malcolm X
"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
"It's impossible for a white person to believe in capitalism and not believe in racism." ~ Malcolm X
"The white man has created a devil, to bring chaos upon this earth." ~ Malcolm X
"If violence is wrong in America, violence is wrong abroad. If it is wrong to be violent defending black women and black children and black babies and black men, then it is wrong for America to draft us and make us violent abroad in defense of her. And if it is right for America to draft us, and teach us how to be violent in defense of her, then it is right for you and me to do whatever is necessary to defend our own people right here in this country." ~ Malcolm X
"Much of what I say might sound bitter, but it's the truth. Much of what I say might sound like it's stirring up trouble, but it's the truth. Much of what I say might sound like its hate, but it's the truth" ~ Malcolm X
"I am and always will be a Muslim. My religion is Islam." ~ Malcolm X
"If this government can send 20 billion dollars to Latin America to some peasants who have never fought for this country or worked for this country or have - or - and is sending hundreds of millions of dollars to Africa and Asia to try and buy friendship of people who will never be friendly toward them, then they should be even more quick to spend some - whatever amount of money is necessary to get inside of their house straight, before it's too late." ~ Malcolm X
"[Negro] should realize that he is living in a war zone, and he is at war with an enemy that is as vicious and criminal and inhuman as any war-making country has ever been." ~ Malcolm X
"You can’t hate the roots of the tree without ending up hating the tree. You can’t hate your origin without ending up hating yourself. You can’t hate the land, your motherland, the place that you come from, and we can’t hate Africa without ending up hating ourselves. The Black man in the Western Hemisphere—North America, Central America, South America, and in the Caribbean—is the best example of how one can be made, skillfully, to hate himself that you can find anywhere on this earth." ~ Malcolm X
"At the bottom of the social heap is the black man in the big-city ghetto. He lives night and day with the rats and the cockroaches and drowns himself with alcohol and anesthetizes himself with dope, to try and forget where and what he is. That Negro has given up all hope. He's the hardest one for us to reach, because he's the deepest in the mud. But when you get him, you've got the best kind of Muslim. I look upon myself as a prime example of this category - as graphic an example as you could find of the salvation of the black man." ~ Malcolm X
"I can't turn around without hearing about some 'civil rights advance's White people seem to think the black man ought to be shouting 'hallelujah's Four hundred years the white man has had his foot-long knife in the black man's back — and now the white man starts to wiggle the knife out, maybe six inches! The black man's supposed to be grateful? Why, if the white man jerked the knife out, it's still going to leave a scar!" ~ Malcolm X
"You don't disarm any white community by confining yourself to any particular method. If you want freedom, then you should get freedom like Patrick Henry said, by whatever method is necessary." ~ Malcolm X
"America preaches integration and practices segregation." ~ Malcolm X
"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
"Respect me, or put me to death." ~ Malcolm X
"I do not pretend to be a divine man, but I do believe in divine guidance, divine power, and in the fulfillment of divine prophecy. I am not educated, nor am I an expert in any particular field but I am sincere, and my sincerity is my credentials." ~ Malcolm X
"The death of over 120 white people is a very beautiful thing." ~ Malcolm X
"Our objective is complete freedom, justice and equality by any means necessary." ~ Malcolm X
"We have a common enemy. We have this in common: We have a common oppressor, a common exploiter, and a common discriminator. But once we all realize that we have this common enemy, then we unite on the basis of what we have in common. And what we have foremost in common is that enemy - the white man. He's an enemy to all of us. I know some of you all think that some of them aren't enemies. Time will tell." ~ Malcolm X
"The greatest miracle Christianity has achieved in America is that the Black man in white Christian hands has not grown violent. It is a miracle that twenty-two million Black people have not risen up against their oppressors in which they would have been justified by all moral criteria and even by the democratic traditions." ~ Malcolm X
"Western interests: imperialism, colonialism, exploitation, racism, and other negative -isms." ~ Malcolm X
"To tell a woman not to talk too much was like telling Jesse James not to carry a gun, or a hen not to cackle." ~ Malcolm X
"If Martin Luther King, Roy Wilkins or any of these compromising Negros who say exactly what the white man wants to hear is interviewed anywhere in the country you don't get anybody to offset what they say. But whenever a black man stands up and says something that white people don't like then the first thing that man does is run around to try and find somebody to say something to offset what has just been said. This is natural but it is done." ~ Malcolm X
"Any time you know you're within the law, within your legal rights, within your moral rights, in accord with justice, then die for what you believe in. But don't die alone. Let your dying be reciprocal. This is what is meant by equality. What's good for the goose is good for the gander." ~ Malcolm X
"Whenever any black man in america shows signs of an uncompromising attitude, against the injustices that he experiences daily, and shows no tendency whatsoever to compromise with it, then the American press [characterizes him] as a radical, as an extremist someone who's irresponsible, or as a rabble rouser or someone who doesn't rationalize in dealing with the problem." ~ Malcolm X
"Just as plagues were visited on Pharaoh so will pestilences and disasters be visited on the white man. Why, it has already started: God has begun to send them heat when they expect cold; he sends them cold when they expect heat. Their crops are dying, their children are being born with all kinds of deformities, the rivers and lakes are coming out of the belly of the earth to wash them away." ~ Malcolm X
"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
"The law of nature gives a man the right to defend himself when he's attacked. And God's law itself gives a man the right to defend himself when he's attacked.so, peaceful suffering and passive resistance and all of that stuff is all right maybe in India somewhere, where the people in India outnumber the whites - about a million to one.But here in America, when you tell that's like an elephant sitting down on a - on a mouse in India with [Mahatma] Gandhi." ~ Malcolm X
"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
"Learn the language that they understand, and when they come upon our doorstep to talk we can talk, and they will get the point. There will be a dialog, there will be some communication, and I am quite certain that then there will be some understanding." ~ Malcolm X
"I asked inmate in New York, Warden Fay at that time if, if it didn't make a better inmate out of the Negroes who accepted it and he said, "Yes." So I asked him then what was it about it that he considered to be so danger, and he, dangerous, and he pointed out that it was the cohesiveness that it produced among the inmates. They stuck together." ~ Malcolm X
"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
"You are either free or not free" ~ Malcolm X
"Revolutions are never waged singing "We Shall Overcome." Revolutions are based upon bloodshed." ~ Malcolm X
"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
"I'm inclined to believe that most Negro leaders, professional Negroes are professional Negroes. Being a Negro is their professional, and being a profe - a leader is their profession. And usually they say exactly what the white man wants - wants to hear them say." ~ Malcolm X
"I must say this concerning the great controversy over rifles and shotguns. The only thing I've ever said is that in areas where the government has proven itself either unwilling or unable to defend the lives and the property of Negroes, it's time for Negroes to defend themselves. Article number two of the constitutional amendments provides you and me the right to own a rifle or a shotgun. It is constitutionally legal to own a shotgun or a rifle." ~ Malcolm X
"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
"Whether we are Christians or Muslims or nationalists or agnostics or atheists, we must first learn to forget our differences. If we have differences, let us differ in the closet; when we come out in front, let us not have anything to argue about until we get finished arguing with the man. If the late President Kennedy could get together with Khrushchev and exchange some wheat, we certainly have more in common with each other than Kennedy and Khrushchev had with each other." ~ Malcolm X
"Anything I do today, I regard as urgent." ~ Malcolm X
"I don't encourage any act of murder nor do I glorify in anybody's death, but I do think that when the white public uses its press to magnify the fact that there are the lives of white hostages at stake, they don't say "hostages," every paper says "white hostages." They give me the impression that they attach more importance to a white hostage and a white death, than they do the death of a human being, despite the color of his skin." ~ Malcolm X
"It is only the Negro leadership, the bourgeois, hand-picked, handful of Negroes who think that they're going to get some kind of respect, recognition, or protection from the Government." ~ Malcolm X
"I have often reflected upon the new vistas that reading has opened to me. I knew right there in prison that reading had changed forever the course of my life. As I see it today, the ability to read awoke inside me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive." ~ Malcolm X
"The only possible way out for the white man is to give us Negroes some land of our own; let us get out, get away from his wicked reign and go for ourselves." ~ Malcolm X
"I'll say nothing against him. At one time the whites in the United States called him a racialist, and extremist, and a Communist. Then the Black Muslims came along and the whites thanked the Lord for Martin Luther King." ~ Malcolm X
"Sometimes you have to pick the gun up to put the Gun down." ~ Malcolm X
"Thoughtful white people know they are inferior to black people." ~ Malcolm X
"We, the Black masses, don't want these leaders who seek our support coming to us representing a certain political party. They must come to us today as Black Leaders representing the welfare of Black people. We won't follow any leader today who comes on the basis of political party. Both parties (Democrat and Republican) are controlled by the same people who have abused our rights, and who have deceived us with false promises every time an election rolls around." ~ Malcolm X
"All over this world people are standing up for freedom." ~ Malcolm X
"The American Negro never can be blamed for his racial animosities - he is only reacting to four hundred years of the conscious racism of the American whites." ~ Malcolm X
"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
"I think the only way one can really determine whether extremism in the defense of liberty is justified, is not to approach it as an american or a european or an African or an Asian, but as a human being. If we look upon it as different types, immediately we begin to think in terms of extremism being good for one and bad for another, or bad for one and good for another. But if we look upon it, if we look upon ourselves as human beings, I doubt that anyone will deny that extremism in defense of liberty, the liberty of any human being, is no vice." ~ Malcolm X
"The war of Armageddon has already started... God is using his many weapons. He is sending hurricanes so fast that [the blue-eyed devils] can't name them. He is drowning them in floods and causing their cars to crash and their airplanes cannot stay up in the sky. Their boats are sinking because Allah controls all things and he is using all methods to begin to wipe the devils off the planet, [and] the enemy is dying of diseases that have never been so deadly." ~ Malcolm X
"When I am dead--I say it that way because from the things I know, I do not expect to live long enough to read this book in its finished form--I want you to just watch and see if I'm not right in what I say: that the white man, in his press, is going to identify me with "hate". He will make use of me dead, as he has made use of me alive, as a convenient symbol, of "hatred"--and that will help him escape facing the truth that all I have been doing is holding up a mirror to reflect, to show, the history of unspeakable crimes that his race has committed against my race." ~ Malcolm X
"In all our deeds, the proper value and respect for time determines success or failure." ~ Malcolm X
"Once he [Negro] realizes that [he is at war ], then he can defend himself." ~ Malcolm X
"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
"Why can't the black man have a God? What's so wrong when a black man says his God will protect him form his white foe? If Jehovah can slay Philistines for the Jews, why can't Allah slay crackers for the so-called Negro?" ~ Malcolm X
"An integrated cup of coffee isn't sufficient pay for four hundred years of slave labor." ~ Malcolm X
"These Negroes who go for integration and intermarriage are linking up with the very people who lynched their fathers, raped their mothers, and put their kid sisters in the kitchen to scrub floors." ~ Malcolm X
"God is going to punish the white man for his misdeeds toward black people." ~ Malcolm X
"White people whom I have met, who have accepted Islam, they don't regard themselves as white but as human beings." ~ Malcolm X
"Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or who says it." ~ Malcolm X
"Here you have 22 million Afro-Americans, black people today, catching more hell than Patrick Henry ever saw. And I'm here to tell you, in case you don't know it, that you got a new - you got a new generation of black people in this country, who don't care anything whatsoever about odds. They don't want to hear you old Uncle Tom handkerchief heads talking about the odds." ~ Malcolm X
"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
"Brothers and sisters, friends and enemies: I just can't believe everyone in here is a friend, and I don't want to leave anybody out." ~ Malcolm X
"A cat that's inside of your house that is angry and dissatisfied and hostile is more dangerous to you than a full-grown lion is on the outside." ~ 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
"To me, the thing that is worse than death is betrayal. You see, I could conceive death, but I could not conceive betrayal." ~ Malcolm X
"I am not a Republican, nor a Democrat, nor an American, and got sense enough to know it. I am one of the 22 million black victims of the Democrats, and one of the 22 million black victims of the Republicans, and one of the 22 million black victims of Americanism... You and I have never seen democracy; all we've seen is hypocracy... If you go to jail, so what? If you're black, you were born in jail. If you're black, you were born in jail, in the North as well as the South. Stop talking about the South. Long as you south of the Canadian border, you're south." ~ Malcolm X
"I was an atheist, I was open-minded, and I began to read in that direction, in the direction of Islam, and everything that I read about it appealed to me." ~ Malcolm X
"I'm trying to get at this. That is, a man may know that he belongs to, say, a group - this group or that group - but he feels himself lost within that group, trapped within his own deficiencies and without personal purpose." ~ Malcolm X
"A hundred years ago the American white men used to put on a white sheet and use a bloodhound against Negroes. Today they have taken off the white sheet and put on police uniforms and traded in the bloodhounds for police dogs, and they're still doing the same thing." ~ Malcolm X
"Every morning when I wake up, now, I regard it as having another borrowed day." ~ Malcolm X
"When you mentioned something about self improvement, the implication is that the negro is something distinct or different, and, therefore, needs to learn how to improve himself. Negro leaders resent this being said, not because they don't know that it's true, but they're thinking, they're looking at it personally. They think that the implication is directed even at them, and that they, and they duck this responsibility." ~ Malcolm X
"How can you thank a man for giving you what's already yours? How then can you thank him for giving you only part of what's already yours?" ~ Malcolm X
"They call me "a teacher, a fomenter of violence." I would say point blank, "That is a lie. I'm not for wanton violence, I'm for justice."" ~ Malcolm X
"We are about to have a racial explosion." ~ Malcolm X
"History is a people's memory, and without a memory, man is demoted to the lower animals." ~ Malcolm X
"One of the main things that I read about it that appealed to me was in Islam a man is honored as a human being and not measured by the color of his skin." ~ Malcolm X
"We must establish all over the country schools of our own to train our own children to become scientists, to become mathematicians. We must realize the need for adult education and for job retraining programs that will emphasize a changing society in which automation plays the key role. We intend to use the tools of education to help raise our people to an unprecedented level of excellence and self respect through their own efforts." ~ Malcolm X
"When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, the United States struck back. She didn't go and bomb - she bombed any part of Japan. She dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. Those people in Hiroshima probably hadn't even, some of them; most of them hadn't even killed anybody." ~ Malcolm X
"Any group, any group that can't work with all other groups, if they are genuinely interested in solving the problems of the Negro collectively why, I don't think that that group is really sincerely motivated toward reaching a solution." ~ Malcolm X
"Not long ago, an English writer telephoned me from London, asking questions. One was "What's your alma mater?" I told him, "Books." You will never catch me with a free fifteen minutes in which I'm not studying something I feel might be able to help the black man." ~ Malcolm X
"When you have your own bus, then you have dignity. When you have your own school, you have dignity. When you have your own country, you have dignity.When you have something of your own, you have dignity. But whenever you are begging for a chance to participate in that which belongs to someone else, or use that which belongs to someone else, on an equal basis with the owner, that's not dignity. That's ignorance." ~ Malcolm X
"Policies change, and programs change, according to time.But objective never changes. You might change your method of achieving the objective, but the objective never changes. Our objective is complete freedom, complete justice, complete equality, by any means necessary" ~ Malcolm X
"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
"I went to a white school over here in Mason, Michigan. The white man made the mistake of letting me read his history books. He made the mistake of teaching me that Patrick Henry was a patriot and George Washington - wasn't nothing non-violent about old Pat or George Washington." ~ Malcolm X
"Stumbling is not falling." ~ Malcolm X
"The junkie can never start to cure himself until he recognizes his true condition." ~ Malcolm X
"Since the white people collectively have practiced the worst form of hatred against Negroes in America and they know that they are guilty of it, now when The Honorable Elijah Muhammad comes along and begins to list the historic deed - the historic attitude, the historic behavior of the white man in this country toward the black people in this country, again, the white people are so guilty and they can't stop doing these things to make Mr. Muhammad appear to be wrong, so they hide their wrong by saying "he is teaching hatred."" ~ Malcolm X
"Forget the methods or the differences in methods. As long as we agree that the thing that the Afro-American wants and needs is recognition and respect as a human being." ~ Malcolm X
"X is not my real name. But if you study history, you'll find why no Black man in the Western Hemisphere knows his real name. Some of his ancestors kidnapped our ancestors from Africa and took us into the Western Hemisphere and sold us there, and our names were stripped from us and so today we don't know who we really are. I am one of those who admit it, and so I just put X up there to keep from wearing his name." ~ Malcolm X
"You have the upper class Negroes who are the modern day Uncle Toms or the 20th century Uncle Toms. They don't wear a handkerchief anymore. They wear top hats. They're called Doctor, they're called - Reverend, but they're still - they play the same role today that Uncle Tom played on the plantation." ~ Malcolm X
"The white devil's time is up." ~ Malcolm X
"You don't integrate with a sinking ship." ~ Malcolm X
"One of the first things I think young people, especially nowadays, should learn is how to see for yourself and listen for yourself and think for yourself." ~ Malcolm X
"Hence I have no mercy or compassion in me for a society that will crush people, and then penalize them for not being able to stand up under the weight." ~ Malcolm X
"No, 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
"Anytime you find someone more successful than you are, especially when you're both engaged in the same business - you know they're doing something that you aren't." ~ Malcolm X
"Since the main problem that American, the Afro- Americans have is a lack of cultural identity. It is necessary to teach [people] that they had some type of identity, culture, civilization before they were brought here." ~ 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
"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
"The White man pays Reverend Martin Luther King so that Martin Luther King can keep the Negro defenseless." ~ Malcolm X
"If it's necessary to form a Black Nationalist army, we'll form a Black Nationalist army. It'll be ballot or the bullet. It'll be liberty or it'll be death." ~ Malcolm X
"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
"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
"The only way we'll get freedom for ourselves is to identify ourselves with every oppressed people in the world. We are blood brothers to the people of Brazil, Venezuela, Haiti, Cuba -- yes Cuba too." ~ Malcolm X
"When the thing is finally sparked, the white man is not there - he's gone. The merchant is not there, the landlord is not there, the one they consider to be the enemy isn't there. So, they knock at his property. This is what makes them knock down the store windows and set fire to things, and things of that sort." ~ Malcolm X
"The government is responsible for the violence, as long as they don't stop it. And if we have to get violent to protect ourselves, then it's the government that should be charged with the crime, because we're only upholding a law that they've been unable to uphold." ~ Malcolm X
"These were African-Arab-Asian values. The only section of Europe that had a high value system during the Dark Ages was the, were those on the Iberian Peninsula in the Spanish-Portuguese area, southern France." ~ Malcolm X
"It is not a case of our people...wanting either separation or integration. The use of these words actually clouds the real picture. The 22 million Afro-Americans don't seek either separation or integration. They seek recognition and respect as human beings." ~ Malcolm X
"I might add, the whites who came here only say 50 years ago as immigrants have come into this country, they have set up businesses. They've developed these businesses into an industry." ~ Malcolm X
"The common enemy is the white man." ~ Malcolm X
"Renaissance or the reawakening of Europe. And, and this reawakening actually involved an era during which the people of Europe, who were coming out of the Dark Ages, were then adopting the value system of the people in the East, in the, of the oriental society." ~ Malcolm X
"A man who believes in freedom will do anything under the sun to acquire, or preserve his freedom." ~ Malcolm X
"And when I speak, I don't speak as a Democrat or a Republican, nor an American. I speak as a victim of America's so-called democracy. You and I have never seen democracy - all we've seen is hypocrisy. When we open our eyes today and look around America, we see America not through the eyes of someone who has enjoyed the fruits of Americanism. We see America through the eyes of someone who has been the victim of Americanism. We don't see any American dream. We've experienced only the American nightmare." ~ Malcolm X
"Only the whites in the South aren't hypocritical about it. You don't find any more inter - there is just as much social intermixing in the South as there - between the races as there is in the North. Only they - in the South they let you know - where they stand, and in the North they take a hypocritical approach or attitude or reaction." ~ Malcolm X
"So early in my life, I had learned that if you want something, you had better make some noise." ~ Malcolm X
"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
"It has taken us that long to get the deaf, dumb, and blind black men in the wilderness of North America to wake up and understand who they are." ~ Malcolm X
"Those who would hunt a man need to remember that a jungle also contains those who hunt the hunters." ~ Malcolm X
"I think there are plenty of good people in America, but there are also plenty of bad people in America and the bad ones are the ones who seem to have all the power and be in these positions to block things that you and I need." ~ Malcolm X
"Don't you run around here trying to make friends with somebody who's depriving you of your rights. They're not your friends, no, they're your enemies. Treat them like that." ~ Malcolm X
