Malcolm X Quotes

I refer to a negro politician as a negro who is selected by Negroes and who is backed by Negroes.

I go for Mao Tse-tung much more than, than Nehru because I think that Nehru brought his country up in a beggar's role.

When I said [ I would work with any organization] I would make the, the reservation that I would work with any organization as long as it didn't make us compromise our religious principles.

Even as a Muslim minister in the Muslim movement, I have always said that I would work with any organization.

The problem [ of the twenty-two million Afro-Americans] is so broad that it's going to take the inner working of all organizations.

Nonviolence is his, is his method. Well, my objective is the same as [Martin Luther] King's.

I Used the Word 'Negro' and I was Firmly Corrected

Once negro community recognize it as such, they can adopt the same measures against the community that harbors the criminals who are responsible for this activity.

Most of those Negroes have been given those jobs by the white political machine, and they serve no other function other than to, as window dressing.

I believe when a negro church is bombed, that a white church should be bombed.

Any time a negro community lives under fear that its churches are going to be bombed, then they have to realize they're living in a war zone.

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 believe that a psychological, cultural, and philosophical migration back to Africa will solve our problem.

All of the civil rights problems during the past years have created a situation where America right now is moving toward a police state. You can't have anything otherwise. So that's your supposition.

I look at the problem of the twenty-two million Afro-Americans as being a problem that's so broad in scope that it's almost impossible for any organization to see it in its entirety.

Only the mistakes were mine.

If [politician] is not fulfilling his function, they then can set up the machinery to remove him from that position by whatever means necessary.

The American system itself is incapable. It is as incapable of producing freedom for the Afro-American as the system of a chicken is of producing a duck egg.

I admire a man who fights a battle against opposition, and if there wasn't something about [Reverend] Galamison that the people, I notice that the power structure is against Galamison.

They [prisons] are not designed to rehabilitate the - the inmate, though the, the public propaganda is that this is their function.

Reverend Galamison is fighting a hard battle against great opposition, and I admire a man who fights a hard battle against great opposition.

[People] have a fear of the, the Muslim movement and the Muslim religion because it has a tendency to make the people who accept it stick together.

Anytime there's a fire in a negro community and it's burning out of control, you send any one of them, send Whitney Young in to put it out.

Most people who work in prison earn money through contraband.

I was in prison and I was an atheist. I didn't believe in anything.

Once I was, yes. But now I have turned my direction away from anything that's racist.

One of my brothers read a lot. His head was forever in some book.

As bad as I was, as much trouble and worry as I caused my mother, I loved her.

If Christianity had asserted itself in Germany, six million Jews would have lived.

In America you have the mouse now trying to sit down on the elephant, thinking that he's going somewhere. And it's - and it's absurd.

My family was so poor we were close to eating the holes inside of doughnuts.

Uncle Sam is forcing integration only because he's trying to impress the people of - abroad that he's morally qualified to be the leader of the world.

Solve the race problem here, and once you solve the race problem here, you don't have to send these billions of dollars abroad.

Soon now, as the Negro awakens a little more and sees the vise that he's in, sees the bag that he's in, sees the real game that he's in, then the Negro's going to develop a new tactic.

I'm not a Republican, nor a Democrat, nor an American, and got sense enough to know it.

Ten guards and the warden couldn't have torn me out of those books. Months passed without even thinking about being imprisoned....I had never been so truly free in my life.

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

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

We cannot think of uniting with others, until after we have first united among ourselves... One can't unite bananas with scattered leaves.

There seems in most countries to be either one extreme or the other. Truly a paradise could exist wherever material progress and spiritual values could be properly balanced.

In my recent travels into African countries and others, I was impressed by the importance of having a working unity among all peoples, black as well as white.

Much of what I say might sound like it's stirring up trouble, but it's the truth!

If the government can't get the black man justice, then it's time for the black man to get some justice for himself.

Let's cool it brothers . . . Spoken to his assassins, three men who stabbed him 16 times.

Segregation is that which is forced upon an inferior by a superior. Separation is done voluntarily by two equals.

America is a white man's country.

We have to keep in mind at all times that we are not fighting for integration, nor are we fighting for separation. We are fighting for recognition as free humans in this society.

You don't do anything to further your stay aboard a ship that you see is going to go down to the bottom of the ocean.

God is more lasting than the white man.

God is about to eliminate the white man from this earth.