Malcolm X Quotes

"Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today."

"If you have no critics you'll likely have no success."

"The future belongs to those who prepare for it today."

"Without education, you're not going anywhere in this world."

"If you don't stand for something you will fall for anything."

"Power never takes a step back except in the face of more power."

"The price of freedom is death."

"Truth is on the side of the oppressed."

"You can't separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom."

"Stumbling is not falling."

"I'm for truth, no matter who tells it. I'm for justice, no matter who it's for or against."

"I'm for anyone who wants to see a better world."

"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."

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

"Any time you beg another man to set you free, you will never be free."

"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."

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

"Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you're a man, you take it."

"We cannot think of being acceptable to others until we have first proven acceptable to ourselves."

"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."

"Concerning nonviolence, it is criminal to teach a man not to defend himself when he is the constant victim of brutal attacks."

"You get freedom by letting your enemy know that you'll do anything to get your freedom; then you'll get it. It's the only way you'll get it."

"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."

"I'm not for separation, and I'm not for integration. I'm for freedom, justice, and equality."

"If you're not ready to die for it, put the word 'freedom' out of your vocabulary."

"The media's the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent."

"I'm a human being first and foremost, and as such I'm for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole."

"You don't have to be a man to fight for freedom. All you have to be is an intelligent human being."

"Power in defense of freedom is greater than power in behalf of tyranny and oppression."

"Education is an important element in the struggle for human rights. It is the means to help our children and our people rediscover their identity and thereby increase their self-respect."

"Armed with the knowledge of our past, we can with confidence charter a course for our future."

"Culture is an indispensable weapon in the freedom struggle. We must take hold of it and forge the future with the past."

"The common goal of 22 million Afro-Americans is respect as human beings, the God-given right to be a human being."

"Our objective is complete freedom, justice and equality by any means necessary."

"We declare our right on this earth to be a human being, to be respected as a human being, to be given the rights of a human being in this society, on this earth, in this day, which we intend to bring into existence by any means necessary."

"I believe in a religion that believes in freedom. Any time I have to accept a religion that won't let me fight a battle for my people, I say to hell with that religion."

"If you turn the other cheek, you can be enslaved for 1,000 years."

"I'm for justice, no matter who it's for or against."

"It's just like when you've got some coffee that's too black, which means it's too strong. What do you do? You integrate it with cream, you make it weak."

"Being here in America doesn't make you an American. Being born here in America doesn't make you an American."

"I'm for violence if non-violence means we continue postponing a solution to the American black man's problem just to avoid violence."

"In all our deeds, the proper value and respect for time determines success or failure."

"You're not supposed to be so blind with patriotism that you can't face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who says it."

"I don't even call it violence when it's in self defense; I call it intelligence."

"History is a people's memory, and without a memory, man is demoted to the lower animals."

"You can't legislate good will—that comes through education."

"If you aren't careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing."

"Envy blinds men and makes it impossible for them to think clearly."

"To have once been a criminal is no disgrace. To remain a criminal is the disgrace."

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

"America preaches integration and practices segregation."

"There is no better teacher than adversity. Every defeat, every heartbreak, every loss, contains its own seed, its own lesson on how to improve your performance the next time."

"Good education, housing and jobs are imperatives for the Negroes, and I shall support them in their fight to win these objectives."

"Despite my firm convictions, I have always been a man who tries to face facts, and to accept the reality of life as new experience and new knowledge unfolds."

"I have always kept an open mind, a flexibility that must go hand in hand with every form of the intelligent search for truth."

"I believe in human beings, and that all human beings should be respected as such, regardless of their color."

"The American Negro has no conception of the hundreds of millions of other non-whites' concern for him."

"When ghetto living seems normal, you have no shame, no privacy."

"You can't hate the roots of a tree and not hate the tree. You can't hate Africa and not hate yourself."

"The real names of our people were destroyed during slavery."

"Nonviolence is fine as long as it works."

"I believe that there will ultimately be a clash between the oppressed and those that do the oppressing."

"We are nonviolent with people who are nonviolent with us."

"A race of people is like an 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."

"They put your mind right in a bag, and take it wherever they want."

"We didn't land on Plymouth Rock, Plymouth Rock landed on us."

"I saw that the best thing I could do was get hold of a dictionary—to study, to learn some words."

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

"This was my first lesson about gambling: if you see somebody winning all the time, he isn't gambling, he's cheating."

"I'm not a racist. I'm against every form of racism and segregation, every form of discrimination."

"I believe in a religion that believes in freedom."

"America is the first country that can actually have a bloodless revolution."

"Integration will not bring a man back from the grave."

"Power, real power, comes from our conviction which produces action, uncompromising action."

"When a person places the proper value on freedom, there is nothing under the sun that he will not do to acquire that freedom."

"A ballot is like a bullet. You don't throw your ballots until you see a target."

"Any time you know you're within the law, within your legal rights, within your moral rights, in accord with justice, then stand up for what you believe in."

"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."

"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."

"Learn to see, listen, and think for yourself."

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

"It's liberty or it's death. It's freedom for everybody or freedom for nobody."

"You and I have never seen democracy; all we've seen is hypocrisy."

"Time is on the side of the oppressed today, it's against the oppressor."

"If you stick a knife nine inches into my back and pull it out three inches, that is not progress."

"The main thing you got to remember is that everything in the world is a hustle."

"Sometimes you have to pick the gun up to put the Gun down."

"There can be no Black-white unity until there is first some Black unity."