Malcolm X quotes

“You can't legislate good will - that comes through education.”

— Malcolm X

“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.”

— Malcolm X

“There is nothing in our book, the Koran, that teaches us to suffer peacefully. Our religion teaches us to be intelligent.”

— Malcolm X

“I believe in the brotherhood of all men, but I don't believe in wasting brotherhood on anyone who doesn't want to practice it with me. Brotherhood is a two-way street.”

— Malcolm X

“You don't have a peaceful revolution. You don't have a turn-the-cheek revolution. There's no such thing as a nonviolent revolution.”

— Malcolm X

“I have been blessed to visit the Holy City of Mecca.”

— Malcolm X

“America is the first country... that can actually have a bloodless revolution.”

— Malcolm X

“What is a Dixiecrat? A Democrat. A Dixiecrat is nothing but a Democrat in disguise.”

— Malcolm X

“The White man pays Reverend Martin Luther King so that Martin Luther King can keep the Negro defenseless.”

— Malcolm X

“Integration will not bring a man back from the grave.”

— Malcolm X

“Despite my firm convictions, I have always been a man who tries to face facts, and to accept the reality of life as new experience and new knowledge unfolds. I have always kept an open mind, a flexibility that must go hand in hand with every form of the intelligent search for truth.”

— Malcolm X

“The real names of our people were destroyed during slavery. The last name of my forefathers was taken from them when they were brought to America and made slaves, and then the name of the slave master was given, which we refuse, we reject that name today and refuse it. I never acknowledge it whatsoever.”

— Malcolm X

“We won't organize any black man to be a Democrat or a Republican because both of them have sold us out. Both of them have sold us out; both parties have sold us out. Both parties are racist, and the Democratic Party is more racist than the Republican Party.”

— Malcolm X

“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.”

— Malcolm X

“Power in defense of freedom is greater than power in behalf of tyranny and oppression, because power, real power, comes from our conviction which produces action, uncompromising action.”

— Malcolm X

“America needs to understand Islam, because this is the one religion that erases from its society the race problem. Throughout my travels in the Muslim world, I have met, talked to, even eaten with people who in America would have been considered 'white,' but the 'white' attitude had been removed from their minds by the religion of Islam.”

— Malcolm X

“Sitting at the table doesn't make you a diner. You must be eating 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.”

— Malcolm X

“I just don't believe that when people are being unjustly oppressed that they should let someone else set rules for them by which they can come out from under that oppression.”

— Malcolm X

“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.'”

— Malcolm X

“No, we are not anti-white. But we don't have time for the white man. The white man is on top already, the white man is the boss already... He has first-class citizenship already. So you are wasting your time talking to the white man. We are working on our own people.”

— Malcolm X

“We who follow the Honorable Elijah Muhammad feel that when you try and pass integration laws here in America, forcing white people to pretend that they are accepting black people, what you are doing is making white people act in a hypocritical way.”

— Malcolm X

“My father didn't know his real name. My father got his name from his grandfather and he got his name from his grandfather and he got it from the slave master.”

— 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

“It's got to be the ballot or the bullet. The ballot or the bullet. If you're afraid to use an expression like that, you should get back in the cotton patch, you should get back in the alley.”

— Malcolm X