Malcolm X - People Quotes

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

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
I don't usually deal with those big words because I don't usually deal with big people. I deal with small people. I find you can get a whole lot of small people and whip hell out of a whole lot of big people. They haven't got anything to lose, and they've got every thing to gain. And they'll let you know in a minute: It takes two to tango; when I go, you go.

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
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 political, the economic philosophy of Black Nationalism only means that we have to become involved in a program of re-education to educate our people into the importance of knowing that when you spend your dollar out of the community in which you live, the community in which you spend your money becomes richer and richer; the community out of which you take your money becomes poorer and poorer.

Malcolm X
Lyndon B. Johnson is the head of the Democratic Party. If he's for civil rights, let him go into the Senate next week and declare himself. Let him go in there right now and declare himself. Let him go in there and denounce the Southern branch of his party. Let him go in there right now and take a moral stand—right now, not later. Tell him don't wait until election time. If he waits too long, brothers and sisters, he will be responsible for letting a condition develop in this country which will create a climate that will bring seeds up out of the ground with vegetation on the end of them looking like something these people never dreamed of. In 1964, it's the ballot or the bullet.

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
We assert that in those areas where the government is either unable or unwilling to protect the lives and property of our people, that our peopie are within our rights to protect themselves by whatever means necessary.

Malcolm X
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.

Malcolm X
We are African, and we happened to be in America. We're not American. We are people who formerly were Africans who were kidnapped and brought to America. Our forefathers weren't the Pilgrims. We didn't land on Plymouth Rock. The rock was landed on us. We were brought here against our will. We were not brought here to be made citizens. We were not brought here to enjoy the constitutional gifts that they speak so beautifully about today.

Malcolm X
In the past, yes, I have made sweeping indictments of all white people. I never will be guilty of that again - as I know now that some white people are truly sincere, that some truly are capable of being brotherly toward a black man. The true Islam has shown me that a blanket indictment of all white people is as wrong as when whites made blanket indictments against blacks.

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
On the assassination of President John F. Kennedy:
It was, as I saw it, a case of "the chickens coming home to roost." I said that the hate in white men had not stopped with the killing of defenseless black people, but that hate, allowed to spread unchecked, had finally struck down this country's Chief Magistrate.

Malcolm X
Zionist Israel's occupation of Arab Palestine has forced the Arab world to waste billions of precious dollars on armaments, making it impossible for these newly independent Arab nations to concentrate on strengthening the economies of their countries and elevate the living standard of their people.

Malcolm X
Black people are fed up with the dillydallying, pussyfooting, compromising approach that we've been using toward getting our freedom. We want freedom now, but we're not going to get it saying We Shall Overcome. We've got to fight until we overcome.

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
We have formed an organization known as the Organization of Afro-American Unity which has the same aim and objective to fight whoever gets in our way, to bring about the complete independence of people of African descent here in the Western Hemisphere, and first here in the United States, and bring about the freedom of these people by any means necessary.
That's our motto. We want freedom by any means necessary. We want justice by any means necessary. We want equality by any means necessary.

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

Malcolm X
When you take your case to Washington, D. C., you're taking it to the criminal who's responsible; it's like running from the wolf to the fox. They're all in cahoots together. They all work political chicanery and make you look like a chump before the eyes of the world. Here you are walking around in America, getting ready to be drafted and sent abroad, like a tin soldier, and when you get over there, people ask you what are you fighting for, and you have to stick your tongue in your cheek. No, take Uncle Sam to court, take him before the world.

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

Malcolm X
It takes heart to be a guerrilla warrior because you're on your own. In conventional warfare you have tanks and a whole lot of other people with you to back you up—planes over your head and all that kind of stuff. But a guerrilla is on his own. All you have is a rifle, some sneakers and a bowl of rice, and that's all you need—and a lot of heart.

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. When they get angry, they aren't interested in logic, aren't interested in odds, aren't interested in consequences. When they get angry, they realize the condition that they're in- that their suffering is unjust… and that anything they do to correct it… they're justified.

Malcolm X
I think there are plenty of good people in America, but there are also plenty of bad people in America and the bad ones are the ones who seem to have all the power and be in these positions to block things that you and I need.

Malcolm X
The problem facing our people here in America is bigger than all other personal or organizational differences. Therefore as leaders, we must stop worrying about the threat we seem to think we pose to each other's personal prestige; and concentrate our united efforts towards solving the unending hurt that is being done daily to our people here in America.

Malcolm X
The American Negro has been entirely brainwashed from ever seeing or thinking of himself, as he should, as a part of the non-white peoples of the world.

Malcolm X
Our people have to be made to see that any time you take your dollar out of your community and spend it in a community where you don't live, the community where you live will get poorer and poorer, and the community where you spend your money will get richer and richer.

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
If Martin Luther King, Roy Wilkins or any of these compromising Negros who say exactly what the white man wants to hear is interviewed anywhere in the country you don't get anybody to offset what they say. But whenever a black man stands up and says something that white people don't like then the first thing that man does is run around to try and find somebody to say something to offset what has just been said. This is natural but it is done.

Malcolm X