Best 712 quotes of Malcolm X on MyQuotes

10 years ago the black man knew what his condition was. And today, because of the world revolution that's taking place all over this earth, the black man would be fighting for what he knows is his by right, but the movement on the part of [Martin Luther] King and the others had done nothing but slow down the militancy that is inherent in the nature of the black man.

22 million African-Americans - that's what we are - Africans who are in America.

Abraham Lincoln was interested in, in saving the Union. Well, most negroes have been tricked into thinking that Lincoln was a negro lover whose primary aim was to free them, and he died because he freed them.

A cat that's inside of your house that is angry and dissatisfied and hostile is more dangerous to you than a full-grown lion is on the outside.

Actually we are Muslims because we believe in the religion of Islam.

Adam Clayton Powell's entire political career has to be looked at in the entire context of the American history and the history of, and the position of the Afro- American or negro in American history. [He] has done a remarkable job in fighting for rights of black people in this country. On the other hand, he probably hasn't done as much as he could or as much as he should because he is the most independent negro politician in this country.

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

After Hitler was destroyed, there was the threat of Stalin, but it was always the world pressure that was upon America that enabled black people to go forward. It was not the initiative internally that the Negro put forth in America, nor was it a change of moral heart on the part of Uncle Sam it was world pressure.

After I made my tour in the Middle, into the Middle-East and Africa and visited Mecca and other places, I think that the separation [ from the Black Muslim movement] became psychological as well as physical, so that I could look at it more objectively and - and separate that which was good from that which was bad.

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

A hundred years ago the American white men used to put on a white sheet and use a bloodhound against Negroes. Today they have taken off the white sheet and put on police uniforms and traded in the bloodhounds for police dogs, and they're still doing the same thing.

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.

All of us were mischievous at some time or another, I more so than any of the rest. [My brother] Philbert and I kept a battle going. ... Even in our fighting, there was a feeling of brotherly union.

All over this world people are standing up for freedom.

All you have to do is go back to slavery - days, and there were two types of slaves, the house slave and the field slave. The house slave was the one who believed in the master, who had confidence in the master and usually was very friendly with the master. And usually he was also used by the master to try and keep the other slaves pacified.

A man who believes in freedom will do anything under the sun to acquire, or preserve his freedom.

A man who stands for nothing will fall for anything.

A man without any history is like a tree without roots

America is a white man's country.

America is subsidizing what is left of the prestige and strength of the once mighty Britain. The sun has set forever on that monocled, pith-helmeted resident colonialist, sipping tea with his delicate lady in the non-white colonies being systematically robbed of every valuable resource. Britain's superfluous royalty and nobility now exist by charging tourists to inspect the once baronial castles, and by selling memoirs, perfumes, autographs, titles, and even themselves.

America needs to understand Islam, because this is the one religion that erases from its society the race problem.

American civil rights leader, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? Lynching is a murder. For the past four hundred years our people have been lynched physically, but now it's done politically. We're lynched politically, we're lynched economically, we're lynched socially, we're lynched in every way that you can imagine.

America needs to understand Islam, because this is the one religion that erases from its society the race problem. Throughout my travels in the Muslim world, I have met, talked to, even eaten with people who in America would have been considered 'white,' but the 'white' attitude had been removed from their minds by the religion of Islam.

America preaches integration and practices segregation.

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.

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.

And in the racial climate of this country today, it is anybody's guess which of the 'extremes' in approach to the black man's problems might personally meet a fatal catastrophe first - 'non-violent' Dr. King, or so-called 'violent' me.

And just because you have colleges and universities doesn't mean you have education.

And what makes the whites who have these middle-class values have those values? Where did they get it? They didn't have these same values four hundred years, five hundred years ago.

A Negro just can't be whipped by somebody white and return with his head up in the neighborhood, especially in those days, when sports and, to a lesser extent show business, were the only fields open to Negroes, and when the ring was the only place a Negro could whip a white man and not be lynched.

An English writer telephoned me from London, asking questions. One was, ‘What’s your alma mater?’ I told him, ‘Books.

A new world order is in the making, and it is up to us to prepare ourselves that we may take our rightful place in it.

An integrated cup of coffee isn't sufficient pay for four hundred years of slave labor.

Anybody who rapes, and plunders, and enslaves, and steals, and drops hell bombs on people... anybody who does these things is nothing but a devil.

... Any county's moral strength, or its moral weakness, is quickly measurable by the street attire and attitude of its women - especially its young women. Wherever ... spiritual values have been submerged, if not destroyed, by an emphasis upon ... material things, invariably the women reflect it.

Any form of integration, forced integration, any - any - any effort to force integration upon whites is actually hypocritical.

Any group, any group that can't work with all other groups, if they are genuinely interested in solving the problems of the Negro collectively why, I don't think that that group is really sincerely motivated toward reaching a solution.

Any negro who occupies a position that was given to him by the white man, if you analyze his function, his function never enables him to really take a firm, uncompromising, militant stand on problems that confront our people.

Any number of my former brothers felt they would make heroes of themselves in the Nation of Islam if they killed me. ...I knew that no one would kill you quicker than Muslim if he felt that's what Allah wanted him to do.

Anything I do today, I regard as urgent.

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.

Anytime anyone is enslaved or in any way deprived of his liberty, that person, as a human being, as far as I'm concerned he is justified to resort to whatever methods necessary to bring about his liberty again.

Any time the negro becomes involved in mature political action, then the resistance of the politicians who benefit from the exploited political system as it now stands will be forced to put, exercise more violent action to deprive the negro of his mature political action.

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.

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

Any time you demonstrate against segregation and a man has the audacity to put a police dog on you, kill that dog, kill him, I'm telling you, kill that dog. I say it if they put me in jail tomorrow, kill that dog. Then you'll put a stop to it.

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.

Any time you find the government involved in a conspiracy to violate the citizenship or the civil rights of a people, then you are wasting your time going to that government expecting redress. Instead, you have to take that government to the World Court and accuse it of genocide and all of the other crimes that it is guilty of today.

Anytime you have to rely upon your enemy for a job you're in bad shape.

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.