Quotes about Malcolm X

14 Sourced Quotes

Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, the Kennedys—there is always a pattern where a piece of information is destroyed, in which a witness is killed. It's so predictable, you can go back and look up old cases.

We need a new leader. We ain't had a black leader in a while.... We had Martin Luther King and Malcolm X and ever since then a bunch of substitute teachers.

As for those who think the Arab world promises freedom, the briefest study of its routine traditional treatment of blacks (slavery) and women (purdah) will provide relief from all illusion. If Malcolm X had been a black woman his last message to the world would have been entirely different. The brotherhood of Moslem men-all colors-may exist there, but part of the glue that holds them together is the thorough suppression of women.

Like many of my generation, I became interested in another Black Muslim. There were no Sweet-By-and-By refrains in the testimony of Malcolm X. His voice was the puritan voice of the American North. Malcolm X had a strong story to tell of white racism and of his own degradation, but also of spiritual struggle and change.

Richard Rodriguez

Andrea presented herself as a street fighter intellectual, a bohemian freedom fighter, and someone who wanted to get to the bottom of things. That quote about Malcolm X is apt. Malcolm pointed out The problem is WHITE PEOPLE. Dworkin said, The problem is MEN. And for all the holes that can be poked in that cloth, there is something about that grain that is absolutely true, when you are the short end of the bolt.

The real tragedy is that there are some ignorant brothers out here. That's why I'm not on this all-white or all-black thing. I'm on this all-real or all fake shit with people, whatever color you are. Because niggas will do you. I mean, there's some [foul] niggas out there [in the streets]; the same niggas that did Malcolm X, the same niggas that did Jesus Christ; every brother ain't a brother. They will do you. So just because it's black, don't mean it's cool. And just because it's white don't mean it's evil.

White people love Wayne Brady, because he makes Bryant Gumbel look like Malcolm X.

The irony is that Barack Obama would not even be president if it were not for the courage of persecuted dissidents such as Martin Luther King or Malcolm X, spied upon by their own government. But Obama understands where power lies. It does not lie with the citizen. It lies with Wall Street and our corporate boardrooms, which have carried out a slow motion coup d'état. And a system of mass surveillance is designed to keep these elites in these boardrooms powerful and the rest of us powerless.

If a man like Malcolm X could change and repudiate racism, if I myself and other former Muslims can change, if young whites can change, then there is hope for America.

Eldridge Cleaver

I have been blessed to see my work flourish. Many people in history — Marcus Garvey, Ida B. Wells, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X — never lived to see their work flourish. I have seen people around the world embrace my philosophy and principles, involving themselves in a cultural institution that my organization and I created. That's something.

Maulana Karenga

They call us murderers, but we did not murder Martin Luther King, Jr., Emmett Till, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, George Jackson, Nat Turner, James Chaney, and countless others. We did not murder, by shooting in the back, sixteen-year-old Rita Lloyd, eleven-year-old Rickie Bodden, or ten-year-old Clifford Glover. They call us murderers, but we do not control or enforce a system of racism and oppression that systematically murders Black and Third World people. Although Black people supposedly comprise about fifteen percent of the total amerikkkan population, at least sixty percent of murder victims are Black. For every pig that is killed in the so-called line of duty, there are at least fifty Black people murdered by the police.

Moral courage... is always defined by the state as treason.... It is the courage to act and speak the truth. Thompson had it. Daniel Ellsburg had it. Malcolm X had it. Martin Luther King had it. What those in authority once said about them they say today about Snowden.

If we became students of Malcolm X, we would not have young black men out there killing each other like they're killing each other now. Young black men would not be impregnating young black women at the rate going on now. We'd not have the drugs we have now, or the alcoholism.

During National Brotherhood Week various special events are arranged to drive home the message of brotherhood — this year, for example, on the first day of the week, Malcolm X was killed, which gives you an idea of how effective the whole thing is.
I'm sure we all agree that we ought to love one another, and I know there are people in the world who do not love their fellow human beings — and I hate people like that!