Top 350 Malcolm X Quotes (2024 Update)
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151. “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

152. “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

153. “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

154. “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

155. “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

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

— Malcolm X

157. “America preaches integration and practices segregation.”

— Malcolm X

158. “I remember one night at Muzdalifa with nothing but the sky overhead I lay awake amid sleeping Muslim brothers and I learned that pilgrims from every land – every color, and class, and rank; high officials and the beggar alike – all snored in the same language.”

— Malcolm X

159. “It is only after slavery and prison that the sweetest appreciation of freedom can come.”

— Malcolm X

160. “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

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

— Malcolm X

162. “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

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. “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

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

— Malcolm X

167. “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

168. “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

169. “I’m for truth, no matter who tells it. I’m for justice, no matter who is for or against it.”

— Malcolm X

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

— Malcolm X

171. “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

172. “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

173. “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

174. “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

175. “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

176. “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

177. “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

178. “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

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

— Malcolm X

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

— Malcolm X

181. “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

182. “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

183. “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

184. “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

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. “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

187. “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

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

— Malcolm X

189. “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

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

— Malcolm X

191. “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

192. “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

193. “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

194. “I am for violence if non-violence means we continue postponing a solution to the American black man’s problem just to avoid violence.”

— Malcolm X

195. “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

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

— Malcolm X

197. “Any time you know you’re within the law, within your legal rights, within your moral rights, in accord with justice, then die for what you believe in. But don’t die alone. Let your dying be reciprocal. This is what is meant by equality. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.”

— Malcolm X

198. “I think teaching a man to hate himself is much more criminal than teaching a man to hate someone else.”

— Malcolm X

199. “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.”

— Malcolm X

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

— Malcolm X