Malcolm X Quotes

Speaking like this doesn't mean that we're anti-white, but it does mean we're anti-exploitation, we're anti-degradation, we're anti-oppression.

Today we have a modern Belshazzar and a modern Pharaoh sitting in Washington D.C.

The black people in this country are taught that their religion and the best religion is the religion of Islam, and when one accepts the religion of Islam, he's known as a Muslim.

[My half-sister] Ella and I always were much closer as basic types; we're dominant people, and [my other half-sister] Mary has always been mild and quiet, almost shy.

It's easy to become a satellite today without even being aware of it. This country can seduce God. Yes, it has that seductive power; the power of the dollar.

The prison systems in this country actually are exploitative and they are not in any way rehabilitative.

What you did to one, you did to all. So they couldn't have that type of religion being taught in the prison.

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.

What I want to know is how the white man, with the blood of black people dripping off his fingers, can have the audacity to be asking black people [why] they hate him?

[Islam] is not measured by the color of his skin.

I don't think that anyone has been really created more by the white press than the civil right leaders.

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.

Always that "if" was there, which meant that the one who was doomed could avoid the doom if he would change his way of behaving.

Nonviolence with Dr. [Martin Luther ]King is only a method. That's not his objective.

I admire the, the stand of China and the stand of Mao Tse- tung, but I can't admire with respect the stand of, of Nehru in India. I just can't do it.

Now the goal of Dr. Martin Luther King is to give Negroes a chance to sit in a segregated restaurant beside the same white man who has brutalized them for four hundred years.

That's where Dr. [Martin Luther] King is mixed up. His goals should be the solution of the problem of the black man in America.

... 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 legislate good will - that comes through education.

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.

It's impossible for a white person to believe in capitalism and not believe in racism.

Nowhere in history has the white man been brotherly toward anyone.

Anything I do today, I regard as urgent.

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.

Every morning when I wake up, now, I regard it as having another borrowed day.

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.

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.

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.

When you aren't affiliated with anything, and then you look at something, you look at it with your eye to the best of your ability.

[JF] Kennedy was a deceitful man. He was a cold-blooded politician whose purpose was to get elected.

I think that Abraham Lincoln probably did more to trick negroes than any other man in history.

The religion of Islam brings out of the individual all of his dormant potential.

For one to control one's thoughts and feelings means one can actually control one's atmosphere and all who walk into its sphere of influence.

[Civil right leaders]themselves in their pronouncements will tell you they need white allies, they need white help, they need white this.

Whenever any group can vote in a bloc, and decide the outcome of elections, and it fails to do this, then that group is politically sick.

Any time you put too many sparks around a powder keg, the thing is going to explode, and if the things that explodes is still inside the house, then the house will be destroyed.

As I say, if we bring up religion we'll have differences; we'll have arguments; and we'll never be able to get together.

Why should [Uncle Sam] send 20 billion dollars down there [South America], which is going to go down the drain every time you have a racial in - incident in this country?

If I can't run my neighborhood you won't want me in your neighborhood.

Whenever I walk the street and see people ready to get with it, that's my reward.

Do something for yourself, and then you will be recognized by the entire world as a man who has done for himself what others have done for themselves.

[At a young age] I had learned enough about women to know not to pressure them when they're thinking something out; they'll tell you when they're ready.

What Martin Luther King is doing is disarming the black people of America of their God-given right and of their natural right.

The white race is doomed not because it's white but because of its misdeeds.

Any way, any form necessary to defend himself; Negro should reserve the right to do that just the same as others have the right to do it.

I live like a man who's dead already! I have no fear whatsoever of anybody or anything

When a man understands who he is, who God is, who the devil is... then he can pick himself up out of the gutter; he can clean himself up and stand up like a man should before his God.

In this country, these Negro leaders have Negroes sittin' - sitting down, thinking that that - there's dignity towards sitting in.

In order, in order to enforce you can't force people to act right toward each other. You can't force, you cannot legislate heart, conditions and attitudes.

No one should advocate any peaceful suffering to black people, unless the black - white man is going to practice the same kind of peaceful suffering.