Quotes from 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.

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.

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

It's hard for anyone intelligent to be nonviolent. Everything in the universe does something when you start playing with his life, except the American Negro. He lays down and says, 'Beat me, daddy.'

Do you know what integration really means? It means intermarriage. That's the real point behind it. You can't have it without intermarriage. And that would result in disintegration of both races.

In the Muslim world, I had seen that men with white complexions were more genuinely brotherly than anyone else had ever been. That... was the start of a radical alteration in my whole outlook about 'white men.'

Being an old farm boy myself, chickens coming home to roost never did make me sad; they've always made me glad.

If it's lawful to have a rifle club to kill pheasants, it should be just as lawful to have one to kill wolves or dogs that are being sicked on little black babies. In fact, it's constitutional. Article Number Two of the constitution guarantees the right of every citizen to own a rifle or a shot gun.

Time is on the side of the oppressed today, it's against the oppressor. Truth is on the side of the oppressed today, it's against the oppressor. You don't need anything else.

To the same degree that your understanding of and attitude towards Afrika becomes more positive, your understanding of and attitude towards yourself will also becomes more positive...

A man who stands for nothing will fall for anything.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

You are either free or not free

It is only after the deepest darkness that the greatest joy can come

I Used the Word 'Negro' and I was Firmly Corrected

A man with a rifle or a club can only be stopped by a person who defends himself with a rifle or a club. That's equality. If the United States government doesn't want you and me to have rifles, then take the rifles away from those racists. If they don't want you and me to use clubs, take the clubs away from the racists. If they don't want you and me to get violent, then stop the racists from being violent. Don't teach us non-violence!!!

Truth does not change, only our awareness of it.

I think that an objective reader may see how in the society to which I was exposed as a black youth here in America, for me to wind up in a prison was really just about inevitable. It happens to so many thousands of black youth.

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.

Let's cool it, brothers.