Top 350 Malcolm X Quotes (2025 Update)
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151. “Culture is an indispensable weapon in the freedom struggle.”

— Malcolm X

152. “America’s greatest crime against the black man was not slavery or lynching, but that he was taught to wear a mask of self-hate and self-doubt.”

— Malcolm X

153. “We don’t go for segregation. We go for separation. Separation is when you have your own. You control your own economy; you control your own politics; you control your own society; you control your own everything. You have yours and you control yours; we have ours and we control ours.”

— Malcolm X

154. “Mankind’s history has proved from one era to another that the true criterion of leadership is spiritual. Men are attracted by spirit. By power, men are forced. Love is engendered by spirit. By power anxieties are created.”

— Malcolm X

155. “If we are extremists, then we are not ashamed of it, for the conditions that our people suffer are extreme, and extreme illness can not be cured with moderate medicine.”

— Malcolm X

156. “If the so-called ‘Christianity’ now being practiced in America displays the best that world Christianity has left to offer – no one in his right mind should need any much greater proof that very close at hand is the end of Christianity.”

— Malcolm X

157. “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.”

— Malcolm X

158. “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.”

— Malcolm X

159. “Revolutions are never waged singing “We Shall Overcome.” Revolutions are based upon bloodshed.”

— Malcolm X

160. “We didn’t land on plymouth rock, Plymouth rock landed on us”.”

— Malcolm X

161. “I don’t see any American dream; I see an American nightmare.”

— Malcolm X

162. “America preaches integration and practices segregation.”

— Malcolm X

163. “You can always chase a dream but it will not count if you never catch it.”

— Malcolm X

164. “Power in defense of freedom is greater than power in behalf of tyranny and oppression, because power, real power, comes from our conviction which produces action, uncompromising action.”

— Malcolm X

165. “Until the image of the black man in the mind of the black man has been changed, there will always be delinquency, parental and juvenile. The idea is not to change the attitude of the white man to the black man but to change the attitude of the black man to himself.”

— Malcolm X

166. “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.”

— Malcolm X

167. “Its the hinge that squeaks that gets the grease.”

— Malcolm X

168. “The political philosophy of black nationalism means that the black man should control the politics and the politicians in his own community; no more.”

— Malcolm X

169. “Twenty-two million African-Americans – that’s what we are – Africans who are in America.”

— Malcolm X

170. “Any time Uncle Sam, with all his machinery for warfare, is held to a draw by some rice eaters, he’s lost the battle.”

— Malcolm X

171. “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.”

— Malcolm X

172. “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.”

— Malcolm X

173. “Sitting at the table doesn’t make you a diner. You must be eating some of what’s on that plate. Being here in America doesn’t make you an American. Being born here in America doesn’t make you an American.”

— Malcolm X

174. “After you get your freedom, your enemy will respect you.”

— Malcolm X

175. “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.”

— Malcolm X

176. “I believe in the brotherhood of all men, but I don’t believe in wasting brotherhood on anyone who doesn’t want to practice it with me. Brotherhood is a two-way street.”

— Malcolm X

177. “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.”

— Malcolm X

178. “I’m not going to sit at your table and watch you eat, with nothing on my plate, and call myself a diner. Sitting at the table doesn’t make you a diner.”

— Malcolm X

179. “Anytime you live in a society supposedly based upon law and it doesn’t enforce its own laws because the color of a man’s skin happens to be wrong, then I say those people are justified to resort to any means necessary to bring about justice when the government can’t give them justice.”

— Malcolm X

180. “A race of people is like and individual man; until it uses its own talent, takes pride in its own history, expresses its own culture, affirms its own selfhood, it can never fulfill itself.”

— Malcolm X

181. “I believe in human rights for everyone, and none of us is qualified to judge each other and that none of us should therefore have that authority.”

— Malcolm X

182. “America’s most dangerous and threatening black man is the one who has been kept sealed up by the Northerner in the black ghettos – the Northern white power structure’s system to keep talking democracy while keeping the black man out of sight somewhere, around the corner.”

— Malcolm X

183. “Anytime you have to rely upon your enemy for a job you’re in bad shape.”

— Malcolm X

184. “They cripple the bird’s wing, and then condemn it for not flying as fast as they.”

— Malcolm X

185. “Much of what I say might sound bitter, but it’s the truth. Much of what I say might sound like it’s stirring up trouble, but it’s the truth. Much of what I say might sound like its hate, but it’s the truth.”

— Malcolm X

186. “Anyway, now, each day I live as if I am already dead, and I tell you what I would like for you to do. When I am dead – I say it that way because from the things I know, I do not expect to live long enough to read this book in its finished form – I want you to just watch and see if I’m not right in what I say: that the white man, in his press, is going to identify me with “hate.” He.”

— Malcolm X

187. “Concerning non-violence: it is criminal to teach a man not to defend himself when he is the constant victim of brutal attacks.”

— Malcolm X

188. “If you form the habit of taking what someone else says about a thing without checking it out for yourself, you’ll find that other people will have you hating your friends and loving your enemies.”

— Malcolm X

189. “Daring to reach, to climb, to crawl, to scratch, to get back up when you’ve been knocked down, to push forward – ever forward – to forgive. It means sacrificing everything if necessary, to carve out a place for your own existence. It means living.”

— Malcolm X

190. “It has always been my belief that I, too, will die by violence. I have done all that I can to be prepared.”

— Malcolm X

191. “I’ve often reflected upon such black veteran numbers men as West Indian Archie. If they had lived in another kind of society, their exceptional mathematical talents might have been better used. But they were black.”

— Malcolm X

192. “An integrated cup of coffee isn’t sufficient pay for four hundred years of slave labor.”

— Malcolm X

193. “I believe in Islam. I am a Muslim and there is nothing wrong with being a Muslim, nothing wrong with the religion of Islam. It just teaches us to believe in Allah as the God.”

— Malcolm X

194. “Sometimes a fruit falls from a tree and rolls so far away from its roots that it’s no longer of the tree. The hard fall, and long journey, bruises the fruit so much that it totally changes it. Its the same way for some of our people. This is why some cant be awakened regardless of how much truth you present to them. This journey has totally brainwashed them to such a degree that they’re no longer of the original tree.”

— Malcolm X

195. “Never allow your enemies to educate your children.”

— Malcolm X

196. “The cornerstones of this country’s operation are economic and political strength and power. The black man doesn’t have the economic strength – and it will take time for him to build it. But right now the American black man has the political strength and power to change his destiny overnight.”

— Malcolm X

197. “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.”

— Malcolm X

198. “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.”

— Malcolm X

199. “I don’t mean go out and get violent; but at the same time you should never be nonviolent unless you run into some nonviolence. I’m nonviolent with those who are nonviolent with me. But when you drop that violence on me, then you’ve made me go insane, and I’m not responsible for what I do.”

— Malcolm X

200. “Those who would hunt a man need to remember that a jungle also contains those who hunt the hunters.”

— Malcolm X