In this post, we’ll read Malcolm X quotes who was a prominent African American civil rights leader.
Malcolm X (1925–1965) later known as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, was known for his advocacy for the rights of African Americans and his criticism of the mainstream civil rights movement’s emphasis on nonviolence.
His father was a Baptist minister and a advocate for black nationalism and his mother was a homemaker. His father, Earl Little, faced frequent harassment from white supremacist groups, and his death (officially ruled as an accident, but believed by many to be a murder by racists) deeply impacted Malcolm’s early life.
He had a troubled youth involving crime and imprisonment and was incarcerated from 1946 to 1952. While in prison, he encountered the teachings of the Nation of Islam (NOI), a religious and black nationalist movement. He later converted to Islam and adopted the name Malcolm X, rejecting “Little” as a “slave name.”
He was initially known for his uncompromising stance on civil rights, which contrasted sharply with the nonviolent approach of leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. and became a leading spokesperson for the NOI, advocating for black empowerment, self-reliance, and separation from white society but later left the NOI due to growing tensions with its leader.
He later did pilgrimage and founded the Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU), focusing on international human rights and cooperation among all races.
Let’s read some of Malcolm X quotes about life, love, freedom and more.
Inspiring Malcolm X Quotes
1. “A wise man can play the part of a clown, but a clown can’t play the part of a wise man.”
2. “As long as you are convinced you have never done anything, you can never do anything.”
3. “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.”
4. “We cannot think of being acceptable to others until we have first proven acceptable to ourselves.”
5. “I have more respect for a man who lets me know where he stands, even if he’s wrong, than the one who comes up like an angel and is nothing but a devil.”
6. “To have once been a criminal is no disgrace. To remain a criminal is the disgrace.”
7. “The ability to read awoke inside of me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive.”
8. “The future belongs to those who prepare for it today.”
9. “History is a people’s memory, and without a memory, a man is demoted to the lower animals.”
10. “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.”
11. “You can’t hate the roots of the tree without ending up hating the tree. You can’t hate your origin without ending up hating yourself.”
Malcolm X Quotes on Life
1. “The hardest test I ever faced in my life was praying.”
2. “Early in life I learned that if you want something, you better make some noise.”
3. “I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity.-because you can hardly mention anything I am not curious about.”
4. “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.”
5. “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.”
6. “In the hectic pace of the world today, there is no time for meditation, or for deep thought. A prisoner has time that he can put to good use. I’d put prison second to college as the best place for a man to go if he needs to do some thinking. If he’s motivated, in prison he can change his life.”
7. “People don’t realize how a man’s whole life can be changed by one book.”
8. “I have often reflected upon the new vistas that reading has opened to me. I knew right there in prison that reading had changed forever the course of my life. As I see it today, the ability to read awoke inside me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive.”
Malcolm X Quotes on Love
1. “How can anyone be against love?”
2. “Men are attracted by spirit. By power men are forced. Love is engendered by spirit. By power anxieties are created.”
3. “You see, Islam is the only religion that gives both husband and wife a true understanding of what love is. The Western “love” concept, you take it apart, it really is lust. But love transcends just the physical. Love is disposition, behaviour, attitude, thoughts, likes, dislikes – these things make a beautiful woman, a beautiful wife. This is the beauty that never fades. You find in your Western civilisation that when a man’s wife’s physical beauty fails, she loses her attraction. But Islam teaches us to look into the woman, and teaches her to look into us.”
4. “We need more light about each other. Light creates understanding, understanding creates love, love creates patience, and patience creates unity.”
5. “I have no hate in me. I don’t have any hate, but I’ve got some sense…I’m not going to let somebody who hates me to tell me to love him. I’m not that way out.”
Malcolm X Quotes on Justice & Equality
1. “I’m for truth, no matter who tells it. I’m for justice, no matter who it’s for or against.”
2. “We black men have a hard enough time in our own struggle for justice, and already have enough enemies as it is, to make the drastic mistake of attacking each other and adding more weight to an already unbearable load.”
3. “Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you’re a man, you take it.”
4. “Segregation is that which is forced upon an inferior by a superior. Separation is done voluntarily by two equals.”
5. “You can’t have capitalism without racism.”
6. “If you have a dog, I must have a dog. If you have a rifle, I must have a rifle. If you have a club, I must have a club. This is equality.”
7. “Why, when all of my ancestors are snake-bitten, and I’m snake-bitten, and I warn my children to avoid snakes, what does that snake sound like accusing me of “If something is yours by right, then fight for it or shut up.”
Malcolm X Quotes on Violence
1. “I don’t even call it violence when it’s in self defense; I call it intelligence.”
2. “Concerning nonviolence, it is criminal to teach a man not to defend himself when he is the constant victim of brutal attacks.”
3. “I don’t advocate violence; but if a man steps on my toes, I’ll step on his…”
4. “If violence is wrong in America, violence is wrong abroad. If it is wrong to be violent defending black women and black children and black babies and black men, then it is wrong for America to draft us, and make us violent abroad in defense of her. And if it is right for America to draft us, and teach us how to be violent in defense of her, then it is right for you and me to do whatever is necessary to defend our own people right here in this country.”
5. “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!!!”
6. “It’s hard for anyone intelligent to be nonviolent.”
Malcolm X Quotes on Women
1. “It seems that some women love to be exploited. when they are not exploited, they exploit the man.”
2. “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.”
3. “I don’t know how many marriage breakups are caused by these movie-and television-addicted women expecting some bouquets and kissing and hugging and being swept out like Cinderella for dinner and dancing — then getting mad when a poor, scraggly husband comes in tired and sweaty from working like a dog all day, looking for some food.”
4. “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.”
Malcolm X Quotes on Education
1. “And just because you have colleges and universities doesn’t mean you have education.”
2. “Without education, you’re not going anywhere in this world.”
3. “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 education.”
4. “Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today.”
5. “You can’t legislate good will – that comes through education.”
Malcolm X Quotes on Freedom
1. “You are either free or not free.”
2. “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.”
3. “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.”
4. “When a person places the proper value on freedom, there is nothing under the sun that he will not do to acquire that freedom. Whenever you hear a man saying he wants freedom, but in the next breath he is going to tell you what he won’t do to get it, or what he doesn’t believe in doing in order to get it, he doesn’t believe in freedom. A man who believes in freedom will do anything under the sun to acquire . . . or preserve his freedom.”
5. “You don’t have to be a man to fight for freedom. All you have to do is to be an intelligent human being.”
6. “It is only after slavery and prison that the sweetest appreciation of freedom can come. ”
7. “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.”
8. “Power in defense of freedom is greater than power on behalf of tyranny and oppression.”
9. “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.”
10. “Dr. King wants the same thing I want. Freedom.”
11. “You can’t separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom.”
12. “Power in defense of freedom is greater than power in behalf of tyranny and oppression.”
13. “It’ll be the ballot or it’ll be the bullet. It’ll be liberty or it’ll be death. And if you’re not ready to pay that price don’t use the word freedom in your vocabulary.”
14. “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 Quotes on Islam
1. “America needs to understand Islam, because this is the one religion that erases from its society the race problem.”
2. “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.”
3. “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.”
4. “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 Quotes on America
1. “We’re not Americans, we’re Africans who happen to be in America. We were kidnapped and brought here against our will from Africa. We didn’t land on Plymouth Rock – that rock landed on us.”
2. “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.”
3. “I see America through the eyes of the victim. I don’t see any American dream–I see an American nightmare.”
Malcolm X Quotes on Blacks
1. “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.”
2. “If you are born in America with a black skin, you’re in prison.”
3. “[…]After becoming a Muslim in prison, I read almost everything I could put my hands on in the prison library. I began to think back on everything I had read and especially with the histories, I realized that nearly all of them read by the general public have been made into white histories. I found out that the history-whitening process either had left out great things that black men had done, or some of the great black men had gotten whitened.”
4. “By making our people in the Western Hemisphere hate Africa, we ended up hating ourselves. We hated our African characteristics. We hated our African identity. We hated our African features. So much so that you would find those of us in the West who would hate the shape of our nose. We would hate the shape of our lips. We would hate the color of our skin and the texture of our hair. This was a reaction, but we didn’t realize that it was a reaction.”
Malcolm X Quotes on Media
1. “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.”
2. “But let’s not forget the Jew. Anybody that gives even a just criticism of the Jew is instantly labeled anti-Semite. The Jew cries louder than anybody else if anybody criticizes him. You can tell the truth about any minority in America, but make a true observation about the Jew, and if it doesn’t ‘t pat him on the back, then he uses his grip on the news media to label you anti-Semite.”
Malcolm X Quotes on Success
1. “If you have no critics, you’ll likely have no success.”
2. “In all our deeds, the proper value and respect for time determine success or failure.”
3. “Change is only a good thing if you change in a good way.”
4. “[…] 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.”
5. “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.”
6. “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.”
7. “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.”
8. “Read absolutely everything you get your hands on because you’ll never know where you’ll get an idea from…”
9. “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 Quotes on Oppressor
1. “They cripple the bird’s wing, and then condemn it for not flying as fast as they.”
2. “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.”
3. “Right now, in every big city ghetto, tens of thousands of yesterday’s and today’s school dropouts are keeping body and soul together by some form of hustling in the same way I did.”
4. “Do nothing unto anyone that you would not like to have done unto yourself. Seek peace, and never be the aggressor—but if anyone attacks you, we do not teach you to turn the other cheek.”
5. “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 …”
6. “If you turn the other cheek, you can be enslaved for 1,000 years.”
7. “Power never takes a back step – only in the face of more power. ”
8. “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.”
9. “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?”
10. “Be peaceful, be courteous, obey the law, respect everyone; but if someone puts his hand on you, send him to the cemetery.”
Short Malcolm X Quotes
1. “A man who stands for nothing will fall for anything.”
2. “It is only after the deepest darkness that the greatest joy can come.”
3. “Truth does not change, only our awareness of it.”
4. “I read aimlessly, until I learned to read selectively, with a purpose.”
5. “If ballots won’t work, bullets will.”
6. “Who taught you to hate yourself?”
7. “One day, may we all meet together in the light of understanding.”
8. “Sometimes you have to pick the gun up to put the Gun down.”
9. “You show me a capitalist, and I’ll show you a bloodsucker.”
10. “A man curses because he doesn’t have the words to say what’s on his mind.”
11. “Time is more important to me then distance.”
12. “Hatred and anger are powerless when met with kindness.”
13. “It is only after the deepest darkness that the greatest joy can come”
14. “Truth does not change, only our awareness of it.”
Malcolm X Quotes on Politics
1. “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.”
2. “People involved in a revolution don’t become part of the system; they destroy the system… The Negro revolution is no revolution because it condemns the system and then asks the system it has condemned to accept them…”
3. “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.”
4. “It is a time for martyrs now, and if I am to be one, it will be for the cause of brotherhood. That’s the only thing that can save this country.”
5. “As long as you’re fighting on the level of civil rights, you’re under Uncle Sam’s jurisdiction. You’re going to his court expecting him to correct the problem. He created the problem. He’s the criminal. You don’t take your case to the criminal; you take your criminal to court.”
6. “Mankind’s history has proved from one era to another that the true criterion of leadership is spiritual.”
Malcolm X Quotes on Relationships
1. “No man has believed perfectly until he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself.”
2. “In any organization, someone must be the boss. If it’s even just one person, you’ve got to be the boss of yourself.”
3. “Even Samson, the world’s strongest man, was destroyed by the woman who slept in his arms. she was the one whose words hurt him.”
4. “I believe in human beings, and that all human beings should be respected as such, regardless of their color.”
5. “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”
6. “To me, the thing that is worse than death is betrayal. You see, I could conceive death, but I could not conceive betrayal.”
7. “A man who tosses worms in the river isn’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.”
8. “He said, one time, that no true leader burdened his followers with a greater load than they could carry, and no true leader sets too fast a pace for his follows to keep up.”
These Malcolm X quotes and ideas on black pride, self-defense, and the importance of black identity have had a lasting impact on subsequent generations of activists.
Malcolm X was assassinated on February 21, 1965, during a speech at the Audubon Ballroom in New York City. Members of the Nation of Islam were convicted of his murder, though questions about the full extent of the conspiracy persist.
Which of these Malcolm X were the most impactful?
Also Read:
- 63 Famous Sun Tzu Quotes from ‘The Art of War’ (Strategy & Leadership)
- 50+ Funny Naruto Quotes That Are Both Hilarious & Savage
- 100 Inspiring Oprah Winfrey Quotes about Self-love & Empowerment
- 130 Inspiring Maya Angelou Quotes about Life, Love & Success
- 170 Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes on Self Reliance, Life & Nature
