Malcolm X Quotes

Truth is on the side of the oppressed.

So early in my life, I had learned that if you want something, you had better make some noise.

Let's just face truth. Facts! Whether or not the white man of the world is able to face truth, and facts, about the true reasons for his troubles - that's what essentially will determine whether or not he will now survive.

If something is yours by right, then fight for it or shut up.

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.

The thing that you have to understand about those of us in the Black Muslim movement was that all of us believed 100 percent in the divinity of Elijah Muhammad. We believed in him. We actually believed that God, in Detroit by the way, that God had taught him and all of that. I always believed that he believed in himself. And I was shocked when I found out that he himself didn't believe it.

You're living at a time of extremism, a time of revolution
A time where there's got to be a change. People in power have misused it
And now there has to be a change and a better world has to be built
And the only way is going to be built is with extreme methods
And I for one will join with anyone, don't care what color you are
As long as you want change this miserable condition that exists on this earth

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 .

It is only after slavery and prison that the sweetest appreciation of freedom can come.

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.

My sincerity is my credentials.

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.

I think that an objective reader may see how in the society to which I was exposed as a black youth here in America, for me to wind up in a prison was really just about inevitable. It happens to so many thousands of black youth.

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.

Revolutions are never waged singing "We Shall Overcome." Revolutions are based upon bloodshed.

I'm a man who believes that I died 20 years ago. And I live like a man who is dead already. I have no fear whatsoever of anybody or anything.

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.

Laura never again came to the drugstore as long as I continued to work there.
The next time I saw her, she was a wreck of a woman, notorious around black Roxbury, in and out of jail.
She had finished high school, but by then she was already going the wrong way.
Defying her grandmother, she had started going out late and drinking liquor.
This led to dope, and that to selling herself to men. Learning to hate the men who bought her, she also became a Lesbian.
One of the shames I have carried for years is that I blame myself for all of this.
To have treated her as I did for a white woman made the blow doubly heavy.
The only excuse I can offer is that like so many of my black brothers today, I was just deaf, dumb, and blind.

Of all our studies, it is history that is best qualified to reward our research.

All praise is due to Allah that I went to Boston when I did.
If I hadn't, I'd probably still be a brainwashed black Christian.

The zionist argument to justify Israel's present occupation of Arab Palestine has no intelligent or legal basis in history.

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.

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.

Anything I do today, I regard as urgent.

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.

Since Western society is deteriorating, it has become overrun with immorality, and God is going to judge it, and destroy it. And the only way the black people caught up in this society can be saved is not to integrate into this corrupt society, but to separate from it, to a land of our own, where we can reform ourselves, lift up our moral standards and try to be godly.

The only thing power respects, is power.

I could see from this, that perhaps if white Americans could accept the Oneness of God, then perhaps, too, they could accept in reality the Oneness of Man - and cease to measure, and hinder, and harm others in terms of their 'differences' in color.

When I was in prison, I read an article - don't be shocked when I say I was in prison. You're still in prison. That's what America means: prison.

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.

The young people are the ones who most quickly identify with the struggle and the necessity to eliminate the evil conditions that exist.

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.

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. Then you can come to an intelligent decision for yourself. If you form the habit of going by what you hear others say about someone, or going by what others think about someone, instead of searching that thing out for yourself and seeing for yourself, you will be walking west when you think you're going east, and you will be walking east when you think you're going west.

For tommorow belongs
to those that prepare for it today.

It'll be the ballot or the bullet. It'll be liberty or it'll be death

I don't encourage any act of murder nor do I glorify in anyone's death, but I do think that when the white public uses it's press to magnify the fact that there are 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.

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.

It has always been my belief that I, too, will die by violence. I have done all that I can to be prepared.

In any organization, someone must be the boss. If it's even just one person, you've got to be the boss of yourself.

All of us were mischievous at some time or another, I more so than any of the rest. [My brother] Philbert and I kept a battle going ... Even in our fighting, there was a feeling of brotherly union.

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.

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.

The black nation of Egypt is the only country that has a science named after its culture: Egyptology

Stumbling is not falling.

Do Your Best Work

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.

No sane black man really wants integration! No sane white man really wants integration!

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.

You are either free or not free

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.

The only persons who really changed history are those who changed men's thinking about themselves.

If you have no critics you'll likely have no success.

Racism is a human problem and a crime that is absolutely so ghastly that a person who is fighting racism is well within his rights to fight against it by any means necessary until it is eliminated.

It takes two to tango; when I go, you go.

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.

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.

No man has believed perfectly until he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself.

After you get your freedom, your enemy will respect you.

Sometimes, I have a dared dream to myself that one day, history may even say that my voice--which disturbed the white man's smugness, and his arrogance, and his complacency--that my voice helped to save America from a grave, possibly even a fatal catastrophe.

The economic philosophy of black nationalism only means that our people need to be re-educated into the importance of controlling the economy of the community in which we live, which means that we won't have to constantly be involved in picketing and boycotting other people in other communities in order to get jobs.

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.

By any means necessary.

BOOKS… "The Loom of Language

It takes heart to be a guerrilla warrior because you're on your own. In conventional warfare you have tanks and a whole lot of other people with you to back you up - planes over your head and all that kind of stuff. But a guerrilla is on his own. All you have is a rifle, some sneakers and a bowl of rice, and that's all you need - and a lot of heart.

Thoughtful white people know they are inferior to black people. Anyone who has studied the genetic phase of biology knows that white is considered recessive and black is considered dominant. When you want strong coffee, you ask for black coffee. If you want it light, you want it weak, integrated with white milk. Just like these Negroes who weaken themselves and their race by this integrating and intermixing with whites. If you want bread with no nutritional value, you ask for white bread. All the good that was in it has been bleached out of it, and it will constipate you. If you want pure flour, you ask for dark flour, whole-wheat flour. If you want pure sugar, you want dark sugar.

Our people have made the mistake of confusing the methods with the objectives. As long as we agree on objectives, we should never fall out with each other just because we believe in different methods, or tactics, or strategy. We have to keep in mind at all times that we are not fighting for separation. We are fighting for recognition as free humans in this society.

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.

This is still one of the black man's big troubles today. So many of those so-called "upper class" Negroes are so busy trying to impress on the white man that they are "different from those others" that they can't see they are only helping the white man to keep his low opinion of all Negroes.

One thing that the white man can never give the black man is self respect. The black man in the ghettos, have to start self correcting his own material moral, and spiritual defects, and evil. The black man need to start his own program to get rid of drunkenness, drug addiction and prostitution. The black man in America has to lift up his own sense of values.

There can be no black-white unity until there is first some black unity.

You don't stick a knife in a man's back nine inches and then pull it out six inches and say you're making progress ... No matter how much respect, no matter how much recognition, whites show towards me, as far as I am concerned, as long as it is not shown to everyone of our people in this country, it doesn't exist for me.

Looking back, I think I really was at least slightly out of my mind. I viewed narcotics as most people regard food. I wore my guns as today I wear my neckties. Deep down, I actually believed that after living as fully as humanly possible, one should then die violently. I expected then, as I still expect today, to die at any time. But then, I think I deliberately invited death in many, sometimes insane, ways.

I have rarely talked to anyone about my mother, for I believe that I am capable of killing a person, without hesitation, who happened to make the wrong kind of remark about my mother. So I purposely don't make any opening for some fool to step into.

I believe in human beings, and that all human beings should be respected as such, regardless of their color

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.

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.'

A revolution is bloody, but America is in a unique position. She's the only country in history in a position actually to become involved in a bloodless revolution. The Russian revolution was bloody, Chinese revolution was bloody, French revolution was bloody, Cuban revolution was bloody, and there was nothing more bloody then the American Revolution. But today this country can become involved in a revolution that won't take bloodshed. All she's got to do is give the black man in this country everything that's due him, everything.

If you are born in America with a black skin, you're in prison

After four hundred years of slave labor, we have some back pay coming, a bill owed to us that must be collected.

The thing that has made the so-called Negro in America fail, more than any other thing, is your, my, lack of knowledge concerning history. We know less about history than anything else.

I myself would go for nonviolence if it was consistent, if everybody was going to be nonviolent all the time. I'd say, okay, let's get with it, we'll all be nonviolent. But I don't go along with any kind of nonviolence unless everybody's going to be nonviolent. If they make the Ku Klux Klan nonviolent, I'll be nonviolent. If they make the White Citizens Council nonviolent, I'll be nonviolent. But as long as you've got somebody else not being nonviolent, I don't want anybody coming to me talking any nonviolent talk.

If the ballot doesn't work, we'll try something else. But let us try the ballot.

Malcolm believed, by the way, in Student Power: not only did he feel that the college-educated black, if he could retain (as he must) his sense of reality and history, and refrain from being absorbed into the white world by its material enticements, was obviously better equipped to cope with the problems besetting his people in America, but he also believed, or hoped, that the white college student was more receptive to change than were his parents.

I came here to tell the truth - and if the truth condemns America, then she stands condemned!

We want freedom by any means necessary. We want justice by any means necessary. We want equality by any means necessary. We don't feel that in 1964, living in a country that is supposedly based upon freedom, and supposedly the leader of the free world, we don't think that we should have to sit around and wait for some segregationist congressmen and senators and a President from Texas in Washington, D.C., to make up their minds that our people are due now some degree of civil rights. No, we want it now or we don't think anybody should have it.

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.

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.

Don't be bitter. Remember Lot's wife when they kill me, and they surely will. You have to use all of your energy to do what it is you have to do. [To his wife Betty Shabazz]

I think teaching a man to hate himself is much more criminal than teaching a man to hate someone else.

I believe it's a crime for anyone who is being brutalized to continue to accept that brutality without doing something to defend himself.

Even Samson, the world's strongest man, was destroyed by the woman who slept in his arms. she was the one whose words hurt him.

Allah always gives you signs, when you are with Him, that He is with you.

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.

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.

How is the black man going to get 'civil rights' before he first wins his human rights?

When you live in a poor neighborhood, you are living in an area where you have poor schools. When you have poor schools, you have poor teachers. When you have poor teachers, you get a poor education. When you get a poor education, you can only work in a poor-paying job. And that poor-paying job enables you to live again in a poor neighborhood. So, it's a very vicious cycle.

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.

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.

Whenever you're going after something that belongs to you, anyone who's depriving you of the right to have it is a criminal. Understand that. Whenever you are going after something that is yours, you are within your legal rights to lay claim to it. And anyone who puts forth any effort to deprive you of that which is yours, is breaking the law, is a criminal.

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.