110+ Malcolm X Quotes On Education, Violence And Freedom

Malcolm X was an African-American Muslim minister and a human rights activist. He was a major figure in the Nation of Islam and a prominent advocate for Black Nationalism in the 1950s and 1960s. He was assassinated in 1965, but his legacy continues to inspire people around the world. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Malcolm X on education, violence, freedom.

Top 10 Malcolm X Quotes

1. If you don't stand for something you will fall for anything.
2. Be peaceful, be courteous, obey the law, respect everyone; but if someone puts his hand on you, send him to the cemetery.
3. You're not supposed to be so blind with patriotism that you can't face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who says it.
4. Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today.
5. You can't separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom.
6. When 'I' replaced with 'We', even the illness becomes wellness.
7. A wise man can play the part of a clown, but a clown can't play the part of a wise man.
8. 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.
9. 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.
10. 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 Image Quotes

When 'I' replaced with 'We', even the illness becomes wellness. — Malcolm X

Without education, you're not going anywhere in this world. — Malcolm X

Learn to see, listen, and think for yourself. — Malcolm X

If you have no critics you'll likely have no success. — Malcolm X

A man who stands for nothing will fall for anything. — Malcolm X

You show me a capitalist, and I'll show you a bloodsucker. — Malcolm X

I have been blessed to visit the Holy City of Mecca. — Malcolm X

Malcolm X Short Quotes

• Learn to see, listen, and think for yourself.
• That's not a chip on my shoulder, that's your foot on my neck.
• If you have no critics you'll likely have no success.
• A man who stands for nothing will fall for anything.
• My alma mater was books, a good library.
• You show me a capitalist, and I'll show you a bloodsucker.
• I have been blessed to visit the Holy City of Mecca.
• We cannot think of being acceptable to others until we have first proven acceptable to ourselves.
• So early in my life, I had learned that if you want something, you had better make some noise.
• Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or who says it.

Malcolm X Quotes About Education

Without education, you're not going anywhere in this world. — Malcolm X

They're not leading our people toward any kind of independence, but they're using their positions and their education and their talent to exploit our people worse than the slave master did during slavery. — Malcolm X

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

Education is our passport to the future. — Malcolm X

Never allow your enemies to educate your children. — Malcolm X

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

Now, the black man here was so-called free by [Abe] Lincoln 100 years ago. The black man in America has an - has a purchasing power of 20 billion dollars. Now, and he's educated. — Malcolm X

I do not pretend to be a divine man, but I do believe in divine guidance, divine power, and in the fulfillment of divine prophecy. I am not educated, nor am I an expert in any particular field but I am sincere, and my sincerity is my credentials. — Malcolm X

Good education, housing and jobs are imperatives for the Negroes, and I shall support them in their fight to win these objectives, but I shall tell the Negroes that while these are necessary, they cannot solve the main Negro problem. — Malcolm X

Education is an important element in the struggle for human rights. It is the means to help our children and thereby increase self-respect. Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today. — Malcolm X

Malcolm X Quotes About Violence

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

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

I don't favor violence. If we could bring about recognition and respect of our people by peaceful means, well and good. Everybody would like to reach his objectives peacefully. But I'm also a realist. The only people in this country who are asked to be nonviolent are black people. — Malcolm X

If someone puts their hands on you make sure they never put their hands on anybody else again. — Malcolm X

Sometimes you have to pick the gun up to put the Gun down. — Malcolm X

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

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

They call me "a teacher, a fomenter of violence." I would say point blank, "That is a lie. I'm not for wanton violence, I'm for justice." — Malcolm X

The black people of America have been victims of violence at the hands of the white men for four hundred years, and following the ignorant Negro preachers, we have thought that it was godlike to turn the other cheek to the brute that was brutalizing us. — Malcolm X

That is a lie. I'm not for wanton violence, I'm for justice. — Malcolm X

Malcolm X Quotes About Freedom

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

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

The only way we'll get freedom for ourselves is to identify ourselves with every oppressed people in the world. We are blood brothers to the people of Brazil, Venezuela, Haiti, Cuba -- yes Cuba too. — Malcolm X

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

Revolution is based on land. Land is the basis of all independence. Land is the basis of freedom, justice, and equality. — Malcolm X

The price of freedom is death. — Malcolm X

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

Our objective is complete freedom, justice and equality by any means necessary. — Malcolm X

The day that the black man takes an uncompromising step and realizes that he's within his rights, when his own freedom is being jeopardized, to use any means necessary to bring about his freedom or put a halt to that injustice, I don't think he'll be by himself. — Malcolm X

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

Malcolm X Quotes About Love

You don't have a revolution in which you love your enemy, and you don't have a revolution in which you are begging the system of exploitation to integrate you into it. Revolutions overturn systems. Revolutions destroy systems. — Malcolm X

To me, the thing that is worse than death is betrayal. — Malcolm X

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

How can anyone be against love? — Malcolm X

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

The Honorable Elijah Muhammad is teaching the black man, you're a human man.All you have to do is dignify yourself. You don't have to wait for any white man to recognize you. Recognize yourself. Love each other. Practice harmony and brotherhood among your own kind. — Malcolm X

I don't have any hate. I've got some sense. I'm not going to let anybody who hates me tell me to love him. I'm not that way-out. — Malcolm X

As bad as I was, as much trouble and worry as I caused my mother, I loved her. — Malcolm X

[ Uncle Sam] is not sending 20 billion dollars to South America because he loves those people down here. He's sending it - sending it to them because he needs their friendship, he needs their allegion - their allegiance. — Malcolm X

In order for a man to really understand himself he must be part of a nation; he must have some land of his own, a God of his own, a language of his own. Most of all he must have love and devotion for his own kind. — Malcolm X

Malcolm X Quotes About Equality

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

This religion (Islam) recognizes all men as brothers. It accepts all human beings as equals before God, and as equal members in the Human Family of Mankind. — Malcolm X

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

Policies change, and programs change, according to time.But objective never changes. You might change your method of achieving the objective, but the objective never changes. Our objective is complete freedom, complete justice, complete equality, by any means necessary — Malcolm X

When you are equal with another person, the problem of integration doesn't even arise. — Malcolm X

Segregation is that which is forced upon an inferior by a superior. Separation is done voluntarily by two equals. — Malcolm X

The Honorable Elijah Muhammad says that if the - what should happen is the black man himself should learn how to develop himself, in the same sense that the white man has developed himself. Then they can both come together and recognize each other as equals. — Malcolm X

The Negro fought and bled and died in every war the white man waged, and he still won't give you justice. You nursed his baby and cleaned behind his wife, and he still won't give you freedom; you turned the other cheek while he lynched you and raped your women, but he still won't give you equality. — Malcolm X

The only way the two can have equal job opportunities is if black people have factories as, as well as white people have factories. — Malcolm X

This is why integration will not work. It assumes that the two races, black and white, are equal and can be made to live as one. This is not true. — Malcolm X

Malcolm X Quotes About Justice

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

We black men have a hard enough time in our own struggle for justice, and already have enough enemies as it is, to make the drastic mistake of attacking each other and adding more weight to an already unbearable load. — Malcolm X

We didn't land on plymouth rock, Plymouth rock landed on us". — Malcolm X

I don't believe in any form of unjustified extremism! But when a man is exercising extremism -- a human being is exercising extremism -- in defense of liberty for human beings it's no vice, and when one is moderate in the pursuit of justice for human beings I say he is a sinner. — Malcolm X

I'm for truth, no matter who tells it. — Malcolm X

One of the first things I think young people, especially nowadays, should learn is how to see for yourself and listen for yourself and think for yourself. — Malcolm X

Brothers and sisters, friends and enemies: I just can't believe everyone in here is a friend, and I don't want to leave anybody out. — Malcolm X

Growing is the result of learning. — Malcolm X

When you hear me say "by any means necessary," I mean exactly that. I believe in anything that is necessary to correct unjust conditions-political, economic, social, physical, anything that is necessary. — Malcolm X

If the government can't get the black man justice, then it's time for the black man to get some justice for himself. — Malcolm X

Malcolm X Quotes About Civil Rights

I see America through the eyes of the victim. I don’t see any American dream; I see an American nightmare. — Malcolm X

We are fighting for the right to live as free humans in this society. In fact, we are actually fighting for rights that are even greater than civil rights and that is human rights. — Malcolm X

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. — Malcolm X

Just as the white man and every other person on this earth has God-given rights, natural rights, civil rights, any kind of rights that you can think of, when it comes to defending himself, black people - we should have the right to defend ourselves also. — Malcolm X

You spend so much time barking up the civil-rights tree, you don't even know there's a human-rights tree on the same floor. — Malcolm X

[Civil right leaders]themselves in their pronouncements will tell you they need white allies, they need white help, they need white this. — Malcolm X

The white press itself created civil right leaders. — Malcolm X

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. — Malcolm X

No sane black man really wants integration! No sane white man really wants integration! — Malcolm X

If it's necessary to form a Black Nationalist army, we'll form a Black Nationalist army. It'll be ballot or the bullet. It'll be liberty or it'll be death. — Malcolm X

Malcolm X Quotes About Politics

If you stick a knife nine inches into my back and pull it out three inches, that is not progress. Even if you pull it all the way out, that is not progress. Progress is healing the wound, and America hasn't even begun to pull out the knife. — Malcolm X

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

True Islam taught me that it takes all of the religious, political, economic, psychological, and racial ingredients, or characteristics, to make the Human Family and the Human Society complete. — Malcolm X

When someone sticks a knife six inches into your back, and then pulls it out two inches and claims he's doing you a favor, don't believe him. — Malcolm X

Western interests: imperialism, colonialism, exploitation, racism, and other negative -isms. — Malcolm X

To me, political action involves making the politician who represents us know that he either produces or he is out, and he's out one way or another. — Malcolm X

Whenever any group can vote in a bloc, and decide the outcome of elections, and it fails to do this, then that group is politically sick. — Malcolm X

I think that the black people in this country have the reached the point where they should reserve the right to do whatever is necessary to see that they exercise complete control over the politicians in the politician, in the politics of their own community by whatever means necessary. — Malcolm X

I think that the problem of the American negro goes beyond the principle of any organization whether it's a religious, political, or otherwise. — Malcolm X

Most of those Negroes have been given those jobs by the white political machine, and they serve no other function other than to, as window dressing. — Malcolm X

Malcolm X Quotes About Unity

There can be no black-white unity until there is first some black unity... We cannot think of uniting with others, until after we have first united among ourselves. We cannot think of being acceptable to others until we have first proven acceptable to ourselves. — Malcolm X

I saw all races, all colors, blue eyed blonds to black skinned Africans in true brotherhood! In unity! Living as one! Worshiping as one! No segregationists, no liberals; they would not have known how to interpret the meaning of those words — Malcolm X

There can be no black-white unity until there is first some black unity. — Malcolm X

We do not condemn the preachers as an individual but we condemn what they teach. We urge that the preachers teach the truth, to teach our people the one important guiding rule of conduct -- unity of purpose. — Malcolm X

We need more light about each other. Light creates understanding, understanding creates love, love creates patience, and patience creates unity. — Malcolm X

In my recent travels into African countries and others, I was impressed by the importance of having a working unity among all peoples, black as well as white. — Malcolm X

Malcolm X Quotes About People

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

The greatest mistake of the movement has been trying to organize a sleeping people around specific goals. You have to wake the people up first, then you'll get action. — Malcolm X

Just as a tree without roots is dead, a people without history or cultural roots also becomes a dead people. — Malcolm X

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

No religion will ever make me forget the condition of our people in this country...No God, no religion, no nothing will make me forget it until it stops, until it's elimitnated. I want to make that point clear. — Malcolm X

The true Islam has shown me that a blanket indictment of all white people is as wrong as when whites make blanket indictments against blacks. — Malcolm X

I for one believe that if you give people a thorough understanding of what confronts them and the basic causes that produce it, they'll create their own program, and when the people create a program, you get action. — Malcolm X

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. — Malcolm X

When we say Afro American, we include everyone in the Western Hemisphere of African descent. South America is America. Central America is America. South America has many people in it of African descent. — Malcolm X

The whites of the younger generation, in the colleges and universities, will see the handwriting on the wall and many of them will turn to the spiritual path of truth. — Malcolm X

Malcolm X Quotes About Black

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

We won't organize any black man to be a Democrat or a Republican because both of them have sold us out. Both of them have sold us out; both parties have sold us out. Both parties are racist, and the Democratic Party is more racist than the Republican Party. — Malcolm X

Yes, I'm an extremist. The Black race here in North America is in extremely bad condition. You show me a Black man who isn't an extremist and I'll show you one who needs psychiatric attention. — Malcolm X

The black nation of Egypt is the only country that has a science named after its culture: Egyptology — Malcolm X

Not long ago, an English writer telephoned me from London, asking questions. One was "What's your alma mater?" I told him, "Books." You will never catch me with a free fifteen minutes in which I'm not studying something I feel might be able to help the black man. — Malcolm X

The Negro revolution is controlled by foxy white liberals, by the Government itself. But the Black Revolution is controlled only by God. — Malcolm X

I find it difficult [to believe] that... Christians accuse [Black Muslims] of teaching racial supremacy or... hatred, because their own history and... teachings are filled with it. — Malcolm X

They asked if I knew what 'conscientious objector' meant. I told them that when the white man asked me to go off somewhere and fight and maybe die to preserve the way the white man treated the black man in America, then my conscience made me object. — Malcolm X

If you're born in America with a black skin, you're born in prison, and the masses of black people in America today are beginning to regard our plight or predicament in this society as one of a prison inmate. — Malcolm X

It has taken us that long to get the deaf, dumb, and blind black men in the wilderness of North America to wake up and understand who they are. — Malcolm X

Malcolm X Quotes About Negro

You know, if ever there was a people who should know how to practice brotherhood, it is the American Negro and it is the people of Egypt. — Malcolm X

You have the upper class Negroes who are the modern day Uncle Toms or the 20th century Uncle Toms. They don't wear a handkerchief anymore. They wear top hats. They're called Doctor, they're called - Reverend, but they're still - they play the same role today that Uncle Tom played on the plantation. — Malcolm X

You have, you can only answer it this way: by turning it around. Can the negro - who is the victim of the system - escape the collective stigma that is placed upon all Negroes in this country? — Malcolm X

Why can't the black man have a God? What's so wrong when a black man says his God will protect him form his white foe? If Jehovah can slay Philistines for the Jews, why can't Allah slay crackers for the so-called Negro? — Malcolm X

The white man is going to keep you integration-minded Negroes cooped up here in America, and when you discover that the white man is a trickster, a devil, that he has no intentions of integrating, then you Negroes will run wild. — Malcolm X

Now, you integration-minded Negroes are trying to force yourselves on your former slave master, trying to make him accept you in his drawing room; you want to hang out with his women rather than the women of your own kind. — Malcolm X

[Negro] should realize that he is living in a war zone, and he is at war with an enemy that is as vicious and criminal and inhuman as any war-making country has ever been. — Malcolm X

Integration is the method toward obtaining that goal. And what he Negro leader has done is gotten himself wrapped up in the method and has forgotten what the goal is. — Malcolm X

Negroes just can't judge each other according to color, because we are all colors, all complexions. — Malcolm X

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. — Malcolm X

Malcolm X Quotes About Face

Power never takes a step back except in the face of more power. — Malcolm X

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. — Malcolm X

Power never takes a back step only in the face of more power. — Malcolm X

Anytime you tell a man to turn the other cheek or to be nonviolent in the face of a violent enemy, you're making that man defenseless. You're robbing him of his God-given right to defend himself. — Malcolm X

I don't trust any white man who teaches Negroes to turn the other cheek or to be nonviolent, which means to be defenseless in the face of a very brutal, criminal enemy. No. That's my yardstick for measuring whites. — Malcolm X

Power doesn't back up in the face of a smile, or in the face of a threat of some kind of nonviolent loving action. It's not the nature of power to back up in the face of anything but some more power. — Malcolm X

Malcolm X Famous Quotes And Sayings

When 'I' replaced with 'We', even the illness becomes wellness. — Malcolm X

Without education, you're not going anywhere in this world. — Malcolm X

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. — Malcolm X

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

You have to be very careful introducing the truth to the black man, who has never previously heard the truth about himself. The black brother is so brainwashed that he may reject the truth when he first hears it. You have to drop a little bit on him at a time, and wait a while to let that sink in before advancing to the next step — Malcolm X

You can cuss out colonialism, imperialism, and all other kinds of ism, but it's hard for you to cuss that dollarism. When they drop those dollars on you, your soul goes. — Malcolm X

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

If you have no critics you'll likely have no success. — Malcolm X

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

One of the tricks of the west is to use or create images, they create images of a person who doesn't go along with their views and then they make certain that this image is distasteful, and then anything that that person has to say from thereon, from thereon in, is rejected. — Malcolm X

My Alma mater was books, a good library... I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity. — Malcolm X

A man who stands for nothing will fall for anything. — Malcolm X

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

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

You show me a capitalist, and I'll show you a bloodsucker. — Malcolm X

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

I have been blessed to visit the Holy City of Mecca. — Malcolm X

The religion of Islam actually restores one's human feelings, human rights, human incentives, human, his talent. — Malcolm X

The zionist argument to justify Israel's present occupation of Arab Palestine has no intelligent or legal basis in history. — Malcolm X

I had blind faith in him. My faith in Elijah Muhammad was more blind and more uncompromising than any faith that any man has ever had for another man. And so I didn't try and see him as he actually was. — Malcolm X

We're not Americans, we're Africans who happen to be in America. We were kidnapped and brought here against our will from Africa. We didn't land on Plymouth Rock - that rock landed on us. — Malcolm X

When I was in Mecca I noticed that their, they had no color problem. That they had people there whose eyes were blue and people there whose eyes were black, people whose skin was white, people whose skin was black, people whose hair was blond, people whose hair was black, from the whitest white person to the blackest black person. — Malcolm X

In my 39 years on this earth, the Holy city of Makka had been the first time I had ever stood before the Creator of all and felt like a complete human being — Malcolm X

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. — Malcolm X

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. — Malcolm X

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. — Malcolm X

I believe it's a crime for anyone who is being brutalized to continue to accept that brutality without doing something to defend himself. — Malcolm X

The real names of our people were destroyed during slavery. The last name of my forefathers was taken from them when they were brought to America and made slaves, and then the name of the slave master was given, which we refuse, we reject that name today and refuse it. I never acknowledge it whatsoever. — Malcolm X

America preaches integration and practices segregation. — Malcolm X

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

Here I am, back in Mecca. I am still traveling, trying to broaden my mind, for I've seen too much of the damage narrow-mindedness can make of things, and when I return home to America, I will devote what energies I have to repairing the damage. — Malcolm X

When I'm born I'm black, when I grow up I'm black, when I'm in the sun I'm black, when I'm sick I'm black, when I die I'm black, and you...when you're born you're pink, when you grow up you're white, when you're cold you're blue, when you're sick you're green, when you die you're grey and you dare call me coloured. — Malcolm X

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. — Malcolm X

If Africa wasn't beautiful the white man wouldn't want it. — Malcolm X

Why am I as I am? To understand that of any person, his whole life, from Birth must be reviewed. All of our experiences fuse into our personality. Everything that ever happened to us is an ingredient. — Malcolm X

Respect me, or put me to death. — Malcolm X

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

I think that the best thing that a person can be is sincere. — Malcolm X

Jews who have been guilty of exploiting the black people in America, economically, civically, and otherwise, hide behind - hide their guilt by accusing The Honorable Elijah Muhammad of being anti-Semitic, simply because he teaches our people to go into business for ourselves and take over the economic leadership in our own community. — Malcolm X

How can you thank a man for giving you what's already yours? How then can you thank him for giving you only part of what's already yours? — Malcolm X

The white man is too intelligent to let someone else come and gain control of the economy of his community. But you will let anyone come in and take control of the economy of your community, control the housing, control the education, control the jobs, control the businesses, under the pre-text that you want to integrate. No, you outta your mind. — Malcolm X

Nonviolence is fine as long as it works. — Malcolm X

Learn the language that they understand, and when they come upon our doorstep to talk we can talk, and they will get the point. There will be a dialog, there will be some communication, and I am quite certain that then there will be some understanding. — Malcolm X

The only difference between [America] and South Africa, South Africa preaches separation and practices separation, America preaches integration and practices segregation. This is the only difference, they don't practice what they preach, whereas South Africa practices and preaches the same thing. — Malcolm X

We were truly all the same (brothers) - because their belief in one God had removed the white from their minds, the white from their behavior, and the white from their attitude. — Malcolm X

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

There were tens of thousands of pilgrims, from all over the world. They were of all colors, from blue-eyed blonds to black-skinned Africans. But we were all participating in the same ritual, displaying a spirit of unity and brotherhood that my experiences in America had led me to believe never could exist between the white and non-white. — Malcolm X

Who taught you to hate the color of your skin? Who taught you to hate the texture of your hair? Who taught you to hate the shape of your nose and the shape of your lips? Who taught you to hate yourself from the top of your head to the soles of your feet? — Malcolm X

You can't hate the roots of a tree and not hate the tree. — Malcolm X

I am a Muslim, because it's a religion that teaches you an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. It teaches you to respect everybody, and treat everybody right. But it also teaches you if someone steps on your toe, chop off their foot. And I carry my religious axe with me all the time. — Malcolm X

Forget the methods or the differences in methods. As long as we agree that the thing that the Afro-American wants and needs is recognition and respect as a human being. — Malcolm X

Life Lessons by Malcolm X

1. Malcolm X taught us to stand up for our beliefs and fight for justice, no matter the cost.
2. He also showed us the power of education and the importance of self-improvement.
3. Finally, he reminded us that we all have the power to make a difference in the world and create positive change.