Malcolm X Quotes

“I believe that there will be ultimately be a clash between the oppressed and those who do the oppressing. I believe that there will be a clash between those who want freedom, justice and equality for everyone and those who want to continue the system of exploitation. I believe that there will be that kind of clash, but I don't think it will be based on the color of the skin...”
― 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, Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements

“اذا لم تقف لشيء ستقع لأي شيء”
― مالكوم إكس

“I actually believed that after living as fully as humanly possible, one should then die violently. I expected then as I still expect today”
― Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X

“I later heard somewhere, or read, that Malcolm X telephoned an apology to the reporter. But this was the kind of evidence which caused many close observers of the Malcolm X phenomenon to declare in absolute seriousness that he was the only Negro in America who could either start a race riot-or stop one. When I once quoted this to him, tacitly inviting his comment, he told me tartly, "I don't know if I could start one. I don't know if I'd want to stop one.”
― Alex Haley, The Autobiography of Malcolm X

“Eventually my mother suffered a complete breakdown, and the court orders were finally signed. They took her to the State Mental Hospital at Kalamazoo. My mother remained in the same hospital at Kalamazoo for about 26 years.

My last visit, when I knew I would never come to see her again-there-was in 1952. I was twenty-seven. My brother Philbert had told me that on his last visit, she had recognized him somewhat. "In spots" he said.

But she didn't recognize me at all.
She stared at me. She didn't know who I was.
Her mind, when I tried to talk, to reach her, was somewhere else. I asked, "Mama, do you know what day it is?"
She said, staring, "All the people have gone."

I can't describe how I felt. The woman who had brought me into the world, and nursed me, and advised me, and chastised me, and loved me, didn't know me.

It was as if I was trying to walk up the side of a hill of feathers."

-Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X”
― Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X

“When Pope Pius XII died, LIFE magazine carried a picture of him in his private study kneeling before a black Christ. What was the source of their information? All white people who have studied history and geography know that Christ was a black man. Only the poor, brainwashed American Negro has been made to believe that Christ was white, to maneuver him into worshiping the white man. After becoming a Muslim in prison, I read almost everything I could put my hands on in the prison library. I began to think back on everything I had read and especially with the histories, I realized that nearly all of them read by the general public have been made into white histories. I found out that the history-whitening process either had left out great things that black men had done, or some of the great black men had gotten whitened.”
― Malcolm X

“ان الناس لاتعرف ان كتابا واحدا كفيل بان يغير مجرى حياة الانسان.”
― Malcolm X

“Do Your Best Work”
― Malcolm X

“Betty's a good Muslim woman and wife. I don't imagine many other women might put up with the way I am. Awakening this brainwashed black man and telling this arrogant, devilish white man the truth about himself, Betty understands, is a full-time job”
― Malcolm X

“Any time you throw your weight behind a political party that controls two-thirds of the government, and that party can't keep the promise that it made to you during election-time, and you'[re dumb enough to walk around continuing to identify yourself with that party, you're not only a chump but you're a traitor to your race”
― Malcolm X "Message to the Grassroots"

“We must understand the politics of our community and we must know what politics is supposed to produce. We must know what part politics play in our lives. And until we become politically mature, we will always be misled, led astray, or deceived or maneuvered into supporting someone politically who doesn't have the good of our community at heart”
― Malcolm X "The Ballot or the Bullet"

“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. We haven't benefited from America's democracy. We've only suffered from America's hypocrisy”
― Malcolm X "The Ballot or the Bullet"

“Any time you throw your weight behind a political party that controls two-thirds of the government, and that party can't keep the promise that it made to you during election-time, and you're dumb enough to walk around continuing to identify yourself with that party, you're not only a chump but you're a traitor to your race”
― Malcolm X "The Ballot or the Bullet"

“Any kind of act that's designed to delay or deprive you and me, right now, of getting full rights, that's the government that's responsible. And anytime you find the government involved in a conspiracy to violate the citizenship of the civil rights of a people in 1964, then you are wasting your time going to that government expecting redress”
― Malcolm X "The Ballot or the Bullet"

“the strategy of the white man has always been divide and conquer. He keeps us divided in order to conquer us. He tells you, I'm for separation and you for integration, and keep us fighting with each other...what you and I are for is freedom...we both got the same objective, we just got different ways of getting' at it”
― Malcolm X "The Ballot or the Bullet"

“we intend to expand it from the level of civil rights to the level of human rights. As long as you fight it on the level of civil rights, you're under Uncle Sam's jurisdiction. You're going to his court expecting him to correct the problem. He created the problem. He's the criminal! You don't take your case to the criminal, you take your criminal to court...you have twenty-two million Afro-Americans whose churches are being bombed, whose littler girls are being murdered, whose leaders are being shot down in broad daylight? Now you tell me why the leaders of this struggle have never taken [their case to the U.N.?]”
― Malcolm X "The Ballot or the Bullet"

“the only way we can bring about a change is speak the language that they understand. The racialist never understands a peaceful language, the racialist never understands the nonviolent language, the racialist has spoken his language to us for over four hundred years. We have been the victim to his brutality”
― Malcolm X "Extremism in Defense of Liberty is No Vice"

“Here, Louise taught her children to love every living creature equally—large or small, pretty or ugly, busy or still, fast or slow, insect or plant. The garden was a testament to true and unconditional brotherhood from the earth on up to the sky, a daily lesson in acceptance and equality. Each living creature had a story, a purpose, a reason for being, and a beauty of its own. Through the majestic trees in the garden, Malcolm would also learn about the importance of roots: nature’s anchors, the base of every living creature; and through the outspread wings of the chirping birds above, he began to see the power of possibility.”
― Ilyasah Shabazz, Malcolm Little: The Boy Who Grew Up to Become Malcolm X

“Here was, to my way of thinking, one of those "educated" Negroes who never had understood the true intent, or purpose, or application of education. Here was one of those stagnant educations, never used except for parading a lot of big words.”
― Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X

“The white Southerner, you can say one thing—he is honest. He bares his teeth to the black man; he tells the black man, to his face, that Southern whites never will accept phony “integration.” The Southern white goes further, to tell the black man that he means to fight him every inch of the way—against even the so-called “tokenism.” The advantage of this is the Southern black man never has been under any illusions about the opposition he is dealing with.”
― Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X

“And there I stood, the invited speaker, at Harvard. A story that I had read in prison when I was reading a lot of Greek mythology flicked into my head. The boy Icarus. Do you remember the story?

Icarus’ father made some wings that he fastened with wax. 'Never fly but so high with these wings,' the father said. But soaring around, this way, that way, Icarus’ flying pleased him so that he began thinking he was flying on his own merit. Higher, he flew—higher—until the heat of the sun melted the wax holding those wings. And down came Icarus—tumbling.

Standing there by that Harvard window, I silently vowed to Allah that I never would forget that any wings I wore had been put on by the religion of
Islam. That fact I never have forgotten…not for one second.”
― Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X

“Sometimes in a panel or debate appearance, I’d find a jam-packed audience to hear me, alone, facing six or eight student and faculty scholars heads of departments such as sociology, psychology, philosophy, history, and religion, and each of them coming at me in his specialty.

At the outset, always I’d confront such panels with something such as: 'Gentlemen, I finished the eighth grade in Mason, Michigan. My high school was the black ghetto of Roxbury, Massachusetts. My college was in the streets of Harlem, and my master’s was taken in prison. Mr. Muhammad has taught me that I never need fear any man’s intellect who tries to defend or to justify the white man’s criminal record against the non-white man—especially the white man and the black man here in North America.'

It was like being on a battlefield—with intellectual and philosophical bullets. It was an exciting battling with ideas.”
― Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X

“And there I stood, the invited speaker, at Harvard. A story that I had read in prison when I was reading a lot of Greek mythology flicked into my head. The boy Icarus. Do you remember the story?

Icarus’ father made some wings that he fastened with wax. 'Never fly but so high with these wings,' the father said. But soaring around, this way, that way, Icarus’ flying pleased him so that he began thinking he was flying on his own merit. Higher, he flew—higher—until the heat of the sun melted the wax holding those wings. And down came Icarus—tumbling.

Standing there by that Harvard window, I silently vowed to Allah that I never would forget that any wings I wore had been put on by the religion of Islam. That fact I never have forgotten…not for one second.”
― Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X

“The white Southerner, you can say one thing—he is honest. He bares his teeth to the black man; he tells the black man, to his face, that Southern whites never will accept phony 'integration.' The Southern white goes further, to tell the black man that he means to fight him every inch of the way—against even the so-called 'tokenism.' The advantage of this is the Southern black man never has been under any illusions about the opposition he is dealing with.”
― Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X

“Saying this, I know I'll hear "anti-Semitic" from every direction again. Oh, yes! But truth is truth.”
― Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X

“Saying this, I know I'll hear 'anti-Semitic' from every direction again. Oh, yes! But truth is truth”
― Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X

“Here was, to my way of thinking, one of those 'educated' Negroes who never had understood the true intent, or purpose, or application of education. Here was one of those stagnant educations, never used except for parading a lot of big words.”
― Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X

“I'm for anybody who's for freedom. I'm for anybody who's for justice. I'm for anybody who's for equality. I'm not for anybody who tells me to sit around and wait for mine.”
― Malcolm X

“I was to learn later that Elijah Muhammad’s tales, like this one of 'Yacub,' infuriated the Muslims of the East. While at Mecca, I reminded them that it was their fault, since they themselves hadn’t done enough to make real Islam known in the West. Their silence left a vacuum into which any religious faker could step and mislead our people.”
― Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X