These Malcolm X motivational quotes about justice, violence, and freedom will inspire you to fight for your right.
Malcolm X was born on May 19, 1925, was an African-American Muslim minister and human rights activist in the Nation of Islam (NOI) until 1964 and is widely known for his controversial stand towards the religion. He also converted to Sunni Islam later in life.
Malcolm X, who was born Malcolm Little, had a troubled childhood with unstable family life and developmental disabilities. He lost his father at the age of 6 and when he was 13, his mother was placed in a mental hospital.
He grew up without guidance from his parents; due to which he frequently ran away from home and got involved in petty crimes. He was eventually sentenced to 10 years in prison in 1946 for larceny and breaking and entering where he underwent a conversion and became a member of the Nation of Islam and changed his name into Malcolm X.
Malcolm X was a fiery orator and gifted writer who created a new philosophy that transformed the lives of millions of African Americans. He preached black pride, self-determination, and human rights. His ideas became mainstream during the 1960s Civil Rights Movement.
Malcolm X was assassinated On February 21, 1965, in New York City.
Here we are sharing a collection of Malcolm X quotes on love, life, media, education, violence, justice, and politics to inspire you to live your life to its full potential.
Malcolm X Quotes
“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
“If someone puts their hands on you make sure they never put their hands on anybody else again.”
― 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
“If you don’t stand for something you fall for everything.”
― Malcolm X
“Be peaceful, be courteous, obey the law, respect everyone; but if someone puts his hand on you, send him to the cemetery.”
― Malcolm X
“To tell a woman not to talk too much was like telling Jesse James not to carry a gun, or a hen not to cackle.”
― Malcolm X
“There is no better than adversity. Every defeat, every heartbreak, every loss, contains its own seed, its own lesson on how to improve your performance next time.”
― Malcolm X
“You are either free or not free”
― Malcolm X, Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power
“Truth does not change, only our awareness of it.”
― Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X
“Any time you beg another man to set you free, you will never be free. Freedom is something that you have to do for yourselves.”
― Malcolm X
Malcolm X Famous Quotes
“It is only after the deepest darkness that the greatest joy can come”
― Malcolm X
“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
“Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today.”
― Malcolm X
“Who taught you to hate yourself?”
― Malcolm X
“I don’t even call it violence when it’s in self-defense; I call it intelligence.”
― Malcolm X
“I’m a man who believes that I died 20 years ago. And I live like a man who is dead already. I have no fear whatsoever of anybody or anything.”
― Malcolm X
“Only the mistakes were mine.”
― Malcolm X
“I believe in human beings, and that all human beings should be respected as such, regardless of their color”
― Malcolm X
“I have more respect for a man who lets me know where he stands, even if he’s wrong. Then the one who comes up like an angel and is nothing but a devil.”
― Malcolm X
“The future belongs to those who prepare for it today.”
― Malcolm X, Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power
Malcolm X Quotes On Media
“People don’t realize how a man’s whole life can be changed by one book.”
― Malcolm X
“They cripple the bird’s wing, and then condemn it for not flying as fast as they.”
― Malcolm X
“My family was so poor we were close to eating the holes inside of doughnuts.”
― Malcolm X
“A man curses because he doesn’t have the words to say what’s on his mind.”
― Malcolm X
“A man who tosses worms in the river isn’t ‘t necessarily a friend of the fish. All the fish who take him for a friend, who think the worm’s got no hook in it, usually end up in the frying pan.”
― Malcolm X
“It is only after slavery and prison that the sweetest appreciation of freedom can come. ”
― Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X
“As long as you are convinced you have never done anything, you can never do anything.”
― Malcolm X
“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
“I was going through the hardest thing, also the greatest thing, for any human being to do; to accept that which is already within you, and around you.”
― Malcolm X
“I don’t advocate violence; but if a man steps on my toes, I’ll step on his…”
― Malcolm X
Malcolm X Quotes On Education
“One day, may we all meet together in the light of understanding.”
― Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X
“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
“Sometimes you have to pick the gun up to put the Gun down.”
― Malcolm X
“Hence I have no mercy or compassion in me for a society that will crush people, and then penalize them for not being able to stand up under the weight. I”
― Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X
“And just because you have colleges and universities doesn’t mean you have the education.”
― Malcolm X, Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power
“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
“Read absolutely everything you get your hands on because you’ll never know where you’ll get an idea from…”
― Malcolm X, Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements
“Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you’re a man, you take it.”
― Malcolm X, Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements
“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
“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
Malcolm X Quotes On Violence
“You show me a capitalist, and I’ll show you a bloodsucker”
― Malcolm X
“You don’t stick a knife in a man’s back nine inches and then pull it out six inches and say you’re making progress … No matter how much respect, no matter how much recognition, whites show towards me, as far as I am concerned, as long as it is not shown to every one of our people in this country, it doesn’t exist for me.”
― Malcolm X
“Thoughtful white people know they are inferior to black people. Anyone who has studied the genetic phase of biology knows that white is considered recessive and black is considered dominant. When you want strong coffee, you ask for black coffee. If you want it light, you want it weak, integrated with white milk. Just like these Negroes who weaken themselves and their race by integrating and intermixing with whites. If you want bread with no nutritional value, you ask for white bread. All the good that was in it has been bleached out of it, and it will constipate you. If you want pure flour, you ask for dark flour, whole-wheat flour. If you want pure sugar, you want dark sugar.”
― Malcolm X
“They know that as long as they keep us undereducated, or with an inferior education, it’s impossible for us to compete with them for job openings. And as long as we can’t compete with them and get a decent job, we’re trapped. We are low-wage earners. We have to live in a run-down neighborhood, which means our children go to inferior schools. They get an inferior education. And when they grow up, they fall right into the same cycle again. This is the American way. This is the American democracy that she tries to sell to the whole world as being that which will solve the problems of other people too.”
― Malcolm X, Malcolm X Talks to Young People
“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. But if you pour too much cream in it, you won’t even know you ever had coffee. It used to be hot, it becomes cool. It used to be strong, it becomes weak. It used to wake you up, now it puts you to sleep.”
― 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
“History is a people’s memory, and without a memory, a man is demoted to the lower animals.”
― Malcolm X
“No, I’m not an American. I’m one of 22 million black people who are the victims of Americanism. One of the … victims of democracy, nothing but disguised hypocrisy. So I’m not standing here speaking to you as an American, or a patriot, or a flag-saluter, or a flag-waver – no, not I! I’m speaking as a victim of this American system. I don’t see any American dream; I see an American nightmare!”
― Malcolm X
“Despite my firm convictions, I have been always a man who tries to face facts, and to accept the reality of life as new experience and new knowledge unfolds it. I have always kept an open mind, which is necessary to the flexibility that must go hand in hand with every form of intelligent search for truth.”
― Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X
“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
Malcolm X Quotes By Any Means Necessary
“You’re not to be so blind with patriotism that you can’t face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or says it.”
― Malcolm X, By Any Means Necessary
“I actually believed that after living as fully as humanly possible, one should then die violently. I expected then as I still expect today”
― Malcolm X, The Autobiography of 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
“Don’t condemn if you see a person has a dirty glass of water, just show them the clean glass of water that you have. When they inspect it, you won’t have to say that yours is better.”
-said by Elijah Muhammad to Malcolm X”
― Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X
“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, The Autobiography of Malcolm X
“The media’s the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that’s power. Because they control the minds of the masses.”
― Malcolm X
“Sitting at the table doesn’t make you a diner unless you eat 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
“… the young people are the ones who most quickly identify with the struggle and the necessity to eliminate the evil conditions that exist.”
― Malcolm X, Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power
“To the same degree that your understanding of and attitude towards Afrika becomes more positive, your understanding of and attitude towards yourself will also become more positive…”
― Malcolm X
“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, Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements
Autobiography Of Malcolm X Quotes
“In fact, once he is motivated no one can change more completely than the man who has been at the bottom. I call myself the best example of that.”
― Malcolm X, The Autobiography of 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, The Autobiography of Malcolm X
“All I had done was to improve on their strategy, and it was the beginning of a very important lesson in life – that 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, The Autobiography of Malcolm X
“So early in my life, I had learned that if you want something, you had better make some noise.”
― Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X
“Hence I have no mercy or compassion in me for a society that will crush people, and then penalize them for not being able to stand up under the weight.”
― Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X
“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 will make use of me dead, as he has made use of me alive, as a convenient symbol, of “hatred”–and that will help him escape facing the truth that all I have been doing is holding up a mirror to reflect, to show, the history of unspeakable crimes that his race has committed against my race.”
― Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X
“This was my first lesson about gambling: if you see somebody winning all the time, he isn’t gambling, he’s cheating. Later on in life, if I were continuously losing in any gambling situation, I would watch very closely.”
― Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X
“I imagine that one of the biggest troubles with colleges is there are too many distractions, too much panty-raiding, fraternities, and boola-boola and all of that.”
― Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X
“The ability to read awoke inside of me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive.”
― Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X
“I believe in recognizing every human being as a human being–neither white, black, brown, or red; and when you are dealing with humanity as a family there’s no question of integration or intermarriage. It’s just one human being marrying another human being or one human being living around and with another human being.”
― Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X
Malcolm X Quotes On Love, Life
“We cannot think of being acceptable to others until we have first proven acceptable to ourselves.”
― Malcolm X
“You can’t have capitalism without racism.”
― Malcolm X
“Truth is on the side of the oppressed.”
― Malcolm X
“There is nothing in our book, the Qur’an, that teaches us to suffer peacefully. Our religion teaches us to be intelligent. Be peaceful, be courteous, obey the law, respect everyone; but if someone lays a hand on you, send him to the cemetery.”
― Malcolm X
“If you have no critics you’ll likely have no success. ”
― Malcolm X
“If you’re not ready to die for it, take the word ‘freedom’ out of your vocabulary.”
― Malcolm X
“We need more light about each other. Light creates understanding, understanding creates love, love creates patience, and patience creates unity.”
― Malcolm X
“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
“And when I speak, I don’t speak as a Democrat. Or a Republican. Nor an American. I speak as a victim of America’s so-called democracy. You and I have never seen democracy – all we’ve seen is hypocrisy. When we open our eyes today and look around America, we see America, not through the eyes of someone who has enjoyed the fruits of Americanism. We see America through the eyes of someone who has been the victim of Americanism. We don’t see any American dream. We’ve experienced only the American nightmare.”
― Malcolm X
“It”s good to keep wide-open ears and listen to what everybody else has to say, but when you come to make a decision, you have to weigh all of what you”ve heard on its own, and place it where it belongs, and come to a decision for yourself; you”ll never regret it. But 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
Malcolm X Quotes On Justice, Politics, Freedom
“If you are in a country that is progressive, the woman is progressive. If you’re in a country that reflects the consciousness toward the importance of education, it’s because the woman is aware of the importance of education. But in every backward country, you’ll find the women are backward, and in every country where education is not stressed it’s because the women don’t have an education.”
― 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
“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
“We didn’t land on Plymouth Rock, Plymouth Rock landed on us”.”
― Malcolm X
“To have once been a criminal is no disgrace. To remain a criminal is the disgrace”
― 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
“A wise man can play the part of a clown, but a clown can’t play the part of a wise man.”
― 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, The Autobiography of 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 is yours?”
― 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, and even eaten with people who in America would have been considered white, but the white attitude was removed from their minds by the religion of Islam. I have never before seen sincere and true brotherhood practiced by all together, irrespective of their color.”
― Malcolm X
Malcolm X Motivational Quotes
“I believe that there will ultimately be a clash between the oppressed and those who do the oppressing. I believe that there will be a clash between those who want freedom, justice and equality for everyone and those who want to continue the system of exploitation. I believe that there will be that kind of clash, but I don’t think it will be based on the color of the skin…”
― Malcolm X
“I see America through the eyes of the victim. I don’t see any American dream–I see an American nightmare.”
― Malcolm X
“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, The Autobiography of Malcolm X
“I’ve had enough of someone else’s propaganda… 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, The Autobiography of Malcolm X
“I learned early that crying out in protest could accomplish things. My older brothers and sister had started to school when, sometimes, they would come in and ask for a buttered biscuit or something and my mother, impatiently, would tell them no. But I would cry out and make a fuss until I got what I wanted. I remember well how my mother asked me why I couldn’t be a nice boy like Wilfred; but I would think to myself that Wilfred, for being so nice and quiet, often stayed hungry. So early in life, I had learned that if you want something, you had better make some noise.”
― Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X
“Children have a lesson adults should learn, to not be ashamed of failing, but to get up and try again. Most of us adults are so afraid, so cautious, so ‘safe,’ and therefore so shrinking and rigid and afraid that it is why so many humans fail. Most middle-aged adults have resigned themselves to failure.”
― Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X
“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.”
― Malcolm X
“I’m sorry to say that the subject I most disliked was mathematics. I have thought about it. I think the reason was that mathematics leaves no room for argument. If you made a mistake, that was all there was to it.”
― Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X
“You can’t hate the roots of a tree and not hate the tree.”
― 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, Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements
Did you get inspired by the famous Malcolm X quotes?
Malcolm X to his admirers was a courageous advocate who fights for the rights of blacks, a man who indicted white America in the harshest terms for its crimes against black Americans; detractors accused him of preaching racism and violence. He has been called one of the greatest and most influential African Americans in history. He has also been described as one of the greatest and most influential American Muslims in modern history.
He also made many enemies in the US government, including J. Edgar Hoover, who tried to discredit him with accusations of communism and threats to expose his criminal past. Malcolm X’s public speeches were sometimes met with violence by white supremacists determined to keep African Americans in their place.
We hope you get inspired by these motivational and inspirational Malcolm X quotes on education, freedom, and politics and take over control of your life.
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