Top 350 Malcolm X Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “The future belongs to those who prepare for it today.”

— Malcolm X

2. “If not now then when, if not me then who?”

— Malcolm X

3. “Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today.”

— Malcolm X

4. “If you don’t stand for something you will fall for anything.”

— Malcolm X

Featured in: Integrity Quotes

5. “If you have no critics you’ll likely have no success.”

— Malcolm X

Featured in: Success Quotes

6. “My alma mater was books, a good library. I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity.”

— Malcolm X

Featured in: Quotes About Books And Reading

7. “People don't realize how a man's whole life can be changed by one book.”

— Malcolm X

8. “We need more light about each other. Light creates understanding, understanding creates love, love creates patience, and patience creates unity.”

— Malcolm X

9. “Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you’re a man, you take it.”

— Malcolm X

Featured in: Freedom Quotes, Patriotic Quotes

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.”

— Malcolm X

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

— Malcolm X

12. “We cannot think of being acceptable to others until we have first proven acceptable to ourselves.”

— Malcolm X

13. “Education is our passport to the future.”

— Malcolm X

14. “By any means necessary.”

— Malcolm X

15. “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.”

— Malcolm X

16. “Read absolutely everything you get your hands on because you’ll never know where you’ll get an idea from.”

— Malcolm X

Featured in: Quotes About Ideas

17. “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.”

— Malcolm X

18. “You can’t separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom.”

— Malcolm X

Featured in: Freedom Quotes, Peace Quotes

19. “We can’t teach what we don’t know, and we can’t lead where we can’t go.”

— Malcolm X

20. “Learn to see, listen, and think for yourself.”

— Malcolm X

21. “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.”

— Malcolm X

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

23. “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.”

— Malcolm X

24. “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.”

— Malcolm X

Featured in: Reading Quotes

25. “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.”

— Malcolm X

26. “The mother is the first teacher of the child. The message she gives that child, that child gives to the world.”

— Malcolm X

27. “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 the next time.”

— Malcolm X

Featured in: Adversity Quotes

28. “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.”

— Malcolm X

29. “Only a fool would let his enemy teach his children.”

— Malcolm X

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

— Malcolm X

31. “And just because you have colleges and universities doesn’t mean you have education.”

— Malcolm X

32. “One day, may we all meet together in the light of understanding.”

— Malcolm X

33. “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.”

— Malcolm X

34. “A wise man can play the part of a clown, but a clown can’t play the part of a wise man.”

— Malcolm X

35. “The mental flexibility of the wise man permits him to keep an open mind and enables him to readjust himself whenever it becomes necessary for a change.”

— Malcolm X

36. “My alma mater was books, a good library.”

— Malcolm X

Featured in: Book Quotes

37. “The only thing power respects, is power.”

— Malcolm X

38. “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.”

— Malcolm X

39. “If you’re not ready to die for it, take the word ‘freedom’ out of your vocabulary.”

— Malcolm X

40. “A man without any history is like a tree without roots.”

— Malcolm X

41. “I live like a man who’s dead already! I have no fear whatsoever of anybody or anything.”

— Malcolm X

42. “The only persons who really changed history are those who changed men’s thinking about themselves.”

— Malcolm X

43. “The price of freedom is death.”

— Malcolm X

44. “You can’t hate the roots of a tree and not hate the tree.”

— Malcolm X

45. “I want to be remembered as someone who was sincere. Even if I made mistakes, they were made in sincerity. If I was wrong, I was wrong in sincerity.”

— Malcolm X

46. “To me, the thing that is worse than death is betrayal. You see, I could conceive death, but I could not conceive betrayal.”

— Malcolm X

47. “You can’t have capitalism without racism.”

— Malcolm X

48. “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.”

— Malcolm X

49. “Sometimes you have to pick the gun up to put the Gun down.”

— Malcolm X

50. “I, for one, will join in with anyone – I don’t care what color you are – as long as you want to change this miserable condition that exists on this earth.”

— Malcolm X