Malcolm X was a powerful orator and thinker whose words continue to resonate today. His quotes are a testament to his strength of character and his ability to see beyond the limitations of society. Here are some of my favorite Malcolm X quotes.
Malcolm X was born in Omaha, Nebraska, on May 19, 1925. He was a bright, intelligent child, and was encouraged to read and learn by his mother, Louise. However, Malcolm’s life changed dramatically when his father was killed in a streetcar accident. Louise was forced to move her family to Boston, where Malcolm faced racism and poverty. He turned to a life of crime, and was eventually sent to prison. While in prison, he became a member of the Nation of Islam (NOI), and changed his name to Malcolm X.
After his release from prison in 1952, Malcolm X became one of the most prominent and influential members of the Nation of Islam.
Malcolm quickly became a leader within the NOI. working to spread its message of black pride and self-reliance. He also became a powerful advocate for the rights of African Americans. His work with the Nation of Islam helped to lay the groundwork for the civil rights movement of the 1960s.
He traveled throughout the United States and the world, preaching about the need for black self-reliance and self-defense. Malcolm X‘s views evolved over time, and he became increasingly critical of the NOI. In March 1964, he was assassinated while giving a speech in New York City.
In this blog post, we’ll take a look at some of Malcolm X quotes on a variety of topics.
105 Malcolm X Quotes
- “People don’t realize how a man’s whole life can be changed by one book.”
2. “Nobody can give you freedom, nobody can give you equality or justice. If you are a man, you take it.”
3. “Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today.”
4. “You can’t have capitalism without racism.”
5. “Change is only a good thing if you change in a good way.”
6. “My alma mater was books, a good library…. I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity.”
7. “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.”
8. “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.”
9. “You can’t hate the roots of a tree and not hate the tree.”
10. “You’re not to be so blind with patriotism that you can’t face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or says it.”
11. “To me, the thing that is worse than death is betrayal. You see, I could conceive death, but I could not conceive betrayal.”
12. “Truth is on the side of the oppressed.”
Famous Malcolm X Quotes
13. “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.”
14. “Sometimes you have to pick the gun up to put the Gun down.”
15. “To have once been a criminal is no disgrace. To remain a criminal is the disgrace”
16. “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.”
17. “If someone puts their hands on you make sure they never put their hands on anybody else again.”
18. “So early in my life, I had learned that if you want something, you had better make some noise.”
19. “If you’re not ready to die for it, take the word ‘freedom’ out of your vocabulary.”
20. “And just because you have colleges and universities doesn’t mean you have education.”
21. “Read absolutely everything you get your hands on because you’ll never know where you’ll get an idea from.”
22. “Be peaceful, be courteous, obey the law, respect everyone; but if someone puts his hand on you, send him to the cemetery.”
Malcolm X Quotes on Freedom
23. “We cannot think of being acceptable to others until we have first proven acceptable to ourselves.”
24. “Tell him that he and all of the other moderate Negroes who are getting somewhere need to always remember that it was us extremists who made it possible.”
25. “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.”
26. “Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you’re a man, you take it.”
27. “Hatred and anger are powerless when met with kindness.”
28. “A wise man can play the part of a clown, but a clown can’t play the part of a wise man.”
29. “Without education, you are not going anywhere in this world.”
30. “As long as you are convinced you have never done anything, you can never do anything.”
31. “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.
32. “We need more light about each other. Light creates understanding, understanding creates love, love creates patience, and patience creates unity.”
Mind-Provoking Malcolm X Quotes
33. “You show me a capitalist, and I’ll show you a bloodsucker”
34. “My black brothers and sisters – of all religious beliefs, or of no religious beliefs – we all have in common the greatest binding tie we could have. We are all black people!”
35. “Stumbling is not falling.”
36. “If you’re not ready to die for it, put the word ‘freedom’ out of your vocabulary.”
37. “You don’t have to be a man to fight for freedom. All you have to do is to be an intelligent human being.”
38. “It seems that some women love to be exploited. when they are not exploited, they exploit the man.”
39. “Either you are a citizen or you are not a citizen at all. If you are a citizen, you are free; if you’re not a citizen you are a slave.”
40. “Dr. King wants the same thing I want. Freedom.”
41. “I feel like a man who has been asleep somewhat and under someone else’s control. I feel that what I’m thinking and saying is now for myself.”
42. “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.”
43. “If you dont stand for something you fall for everything.”
44. “If you have no critics you’ll likely have no success. ”
45. “It is only after slavery and prison that the sweetest appreciation of freedom can come.”
46. “I don’t even call it violence when it’s in self defense; I call it intelligence.”
47. “No man is given but so much time to accomplish whatever is his life’s work.”
48. “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.”
Inspirational Malcolm X Quotes
49. “The ability to read awoke inside of me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive.”
50. “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 is yours?”
51. “I was going through the hardest thing, also the greatest thing, for any human being to do; to accept that which is already within you, and around you.”
52. “Concerning non-violence: it is criminal to teach a man not to defend himself when he is the constant victim of brutal attacks.”
53. “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 next time.”
54. “I imagine that one of the biggest troubles with colleges is there are too many distractions, too much panty-raiding, fraternities, and boola-boola and all of that.”
56. “I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity.-because you can hardly mention anything I am not curious about.”
57. “If something is yours by right, then fight for it or shut up.”
58. “I have more respect for a man who let 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 Quotes on Change and Justice
59. “I see America through the eyes of the victim. I don’t see any American dream–I see an American nightmare.”
60. “I don’t even call it violence when it’s in self defense; I call it intelligence.”
61. “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.”
62. “I’m sorry to say that the subject I most disliked was mathematics. I have thought about it. I think the reason was that mathematics leaves no room for argument. If you made a mistake, that was all there was to it.”
63. “Right now, in every big city ghetto, tens of thousands of yesterday’s and today’s school dropouts are keeping body and soul together by some form of hustling in the same way I did.”
64. “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.”
65. “I’m for truth, no matter who tells it. I’m for justice, no matter who it’s for or against.”
66. “I’m for truth, no matter who tells it. I’m for justice, no matter who is for or against it.”
67. “In any organization, someone must be the boss. If it’s even just one person, you’ve got to be the boss of yourself.”
68. “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.”
The Best Malcolm X Quotes
69. “Any time you beg another man to set you free, you will never be free. Freedom is something that you have to do for yourselves.”
70. “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.”
71. “People don’t realize how a man’s whole life can be changed by one book.”
72. “You don’t have to be a man to fight for freedom. All you have to do is to be an intelligent human being.”
73. “Any time you beg another man to set you free, you will never be free. Freedom is something that you have to do for yourselves.”
74. “If you are born in America with a black skin, you’re in prison”
75. “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.”
76. “When ghetto living seems normal, you have no shame, no privacy.”
77. “The future belongs to those who prepare for it today.”
78. “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.”
79. “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.”
80. “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.”
81. “It is a time for martyrs now, and if I am to be one, it will be for the cause of brotherhood. That’s the only thing that can save this country.”
82. “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.”
83. “Yes, I’m an extremist. The black race… 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!”
84. “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.”
85. “There is nothing in our book, the Qur’an, that teaches us to suffer peacefully. Our religion teaches us to be intelligent. Be peaceful, be courteous, obey the law, respect everyone; but if someone lays a hand on you, send him to the cemetery.”
86. “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.”
87. “Power in defense of freedom is greater than power in behalf of tyranny and oppression.”
88. “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.”
89. “Truth does not change, only our awareness of it.”
90. “Power in defense of freedom is greater than power on behalf of tyranny and oppression.”
91. “A man who stands for nothing will fall for anything.”
92. “Children have a lesson adults should learn, to not be ashamed of failing, but to get up and try again. Most of us adults are so afraid, so cautious, so ‘safe,’ and therefore so shrinking and rigid and afraid that it is why so many humans fail. Most middle-aged adults have resigned themselves to failure.”
93. “If you have a dog, I must have a dog. If you have a rifle, I must have a rifle. If you have a club, I must have a club. This is equality.”
94. “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.”
95. “Time is more important to me then distance”
96. “You are either free or not free”
97. “This is why I say it’s the ballot or the bullet. It’s liberty or it’s death. It’s freedom for everybody or freedom for nobody.”
98. “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.”
99. “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.”
100. “I believe in the brotherhood of man, all men, but I don’t believe in brotherhood with anybody who doesn’t want brotherhood with me. I believe in treating people right, but I’m not going to waste my time trying to treat somebody right who doesn’t know how to return the treatment”
101. “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.”
102. “A man who tosses worms in the river isn’t ‘t necessarily a friend of the fish. All the fish who take him for a friend, who think the worm’s got no hook in it, usually end up in the frying pan.”
103. “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.”
104. “It is only after the deepest darkness that the greatest joy can come”
105. “In all our deeds, the proper value and respect for time determines success or failure.”