Quotes from Malcolm X

Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you really want it, you take it.

Where the really sincere white people have got to do their "proving" of themselves is not among the black victims, but out on the battle lines of where America's racism really is—and that's in their own home communities; America's racism is among their own fellow whites. That's where the sincere whites who really mean to accomplish something have got to work. Aside

In any organization, someone must be the boss. If it's even just one person, you've got to be the boss of yourself.

Never ask a woman about other men. Either she'll tell you a lie, and you still won't know, or if she tells you the truth, you might not have wanted to hear it in the first place.

the truth can be quickly received, or received at all, only by the sinner who knows and admits that he is guilty of having sinned much. Stated another way: only guilt admitted accepts truth.

A man who stands for nothing will fall for everything.

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

No one will know who we are... until we now who we are! We will be able to go anywhere until we know where we are!

All praise is due to Allah that I went to Boston when I did. If I hadn't, I'd probably still be a brainwashed black Christian.

This is the thing you need to spread the word about among our people wherever you go. Never let them be brainwashed into thinking that whenever they take steps to see that they're in a position to defend themselves that they;re being unlawful. The only time you're being unlawful is when you break the law. It's LAWFUL to have something to DEFEND yourself.

Yes, I have cherished my "demagogue" role. I know that societies often have killed the people who have helped to change those societies. And if I can die having brought any light, having exposed any meaningful truth that will help to destroy the racist cancer that is malignant in the body of America—then, all of the credit is due to Allah. Only the mistakes have been mine.

A thousand ways every day, the white man is telling you You can't live here, you can't enter here, you can't eat here, drink here, walk here, work here, you can't ride here, you can't play here, you can't study here. Haven't we seen enough to see that he has no plan to *unite* with you?

Bütün uyuyanlar? uyand?rmaya bir tek uyan?k yeter.

there seemed to be a higher code of ethics and sisterliness among those prostitutes than among numerous ladies of the church who have more men for kicks than the prostitutes have for pay.

Why is the American black man so complacent about being trampled upon? Why doesn't the American black man fight to be a human being?

The hardest test I ever faced in my life was praying.

No matter how much respect, no matter how much recognition whites show towards me…as long as that same respect and recognition isn't shown towards everyone of our people in this country–it doesn't exist for me.

Someone has to pay. Somewhere, somehow, someone has to pay. When a snake bites your children, you don't go and look for the snake that has blood on it's jaws, any old snake will do. Any old snake will do!

If ballots won't work, bullets will.

BOOKS… The Loom of Language

Whether you use bullets or ballots, you've got to aim well; don't strike at the puppet, strike at the puppeteer.

It is the process of mis-education that inhibits the full potential of a nation.

Sometimes, I have a dared dream to myself that one day, history may even say that my voice--which disturbed the white man's smugness, and his arrogance, and his complacency--that my voice helped to save America from a grave, possibly even a fatal catastrophe.

It's like the Negro in America seeing the white man win all the time. He's a professional gambler; he has all the cards and the odds stacked on his side, and he has always dealt to our people from the bottom of the deck.