Malcolm X

Stumbling is not falling.

The true Islam has shown me that a blanket indictment of all white people is as wrong as when whites make blanket indictments against blacks.

You can always chase a dream but it will not count if you never catch it.

I believe in human beings, and that all human beings should be respected as such, regardless of their color.

Truth is on the side of the oppressed.

Allah always gives you signs, when you are with Him, that He is with you.

America preaches integration and practices segregation.

To have once been a criminal is no disgrace. To remain a criminal is the disgrace.

If you're not ready to die for it, put the word 'freedom' out of your vocabulary.

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.

I think that the best thing that a person can be is sincere.

Power never takes a back step - only in the face of more power.

In the past the greatest weapon the white man has had has been his ability to divide and conquer. If I take my hand and slap you you dont even feel it. It might sting you because these digits are separated. But all I have to do to put you back in your place is bring those digits together.

Be peaceful, be courteous, obey the law, respect everyone; but if someone puts his hand on you, send him to the cemetery.

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.

After you get your freedom, your enemy will respect you.

We Muslims believe that the white race, which is guilty of having oppressed and exploited and enslaved our people here in America, should and will be the victims of God's divine wrath.

Nonviolence is fine as long as it works.

You have to realize that up until about 1959, Africa was dominated by the colonial powers. And by the colonial powers of Europe having complete control over Africa, they projected Africa always in a negative light - jungles, savages, cannibals, nothing civilized.

Sometimes you have to pick the gun up to put the Gun down.

I don't even call it violence when it's in self defense; I call it intelligence.

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.

You're not supposed to be so blind with patriotism that you can't face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who says it.

We are not fighting for integration, nor are we fighting for separation. We are fighting for recognition as human beings...

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.

To me the thing that is worse than death is betrayal. You see I could conceive death but I could not conceive betrayal.

I believe in human beings and that all human beings should be respected as such regardless of their color.

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.

The American Negro never can be blamed for his racial animosities - he is only reacting to 400 years of the conscious racism of the American whites.

History proves that the white man is a devil.

A man who believes in freedom will do anything under the sun to acquire, or preserve his freedom.

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

Education is our passport to the future for tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today.

The white man, in his press, is going to identify me with 'hate.'

The goal of Dr. Martin Luther King is to give Negroes a chance to sit in a segregated restaurant beside the same white man who had brutalized them for 400 years.

You cant separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom.

Without education, you are not going anywhere in this world.

You show me a capitalist, and I'll show you a bloodsucker.

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

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

If ballots won't work, bullets will.

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.

If you're not ready to die for it, take the word "freedom" out of your vocabulary.

The white man made the mistake of letting me read his history books. He made the mistake of teaching me that Patrick Henry was a patriot and George Washington - wasn't nothing non-violent about old Pat or George Washington.

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.

The religion of Islam brings out of the individual all of his dormant potential.

When ghetto living seems normal, you have no shame, no privacy.

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.

You can't separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom.

The mental flexibility of the wise man permits him to keep an open mind and enables him to readjust himself whenever it becomes necessary for a change.

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.

A wise man can play the part of a clown, but a clown can't play the part of a wise man.

The American Negro has no conception of the hundreds of millions of other non-whites' concern for him: he has no conception of their feeling of brotherhood for and with him.

If you turn the other cheek, you can be enslaved for 1,000 years.

Wrong is wrong, no matter who says it.

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.

Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you're a man, you take it.

I want to take Negroes out of the ghetto and put them in good neighborhoods in good houses.

The Negro revolution is controlled by foxy white liberals, by the Government itself. But the Black Revolution is controlled only by God.

If someone puts their hands on you make sure they never put their hands on anybody else again.

The religion of Islam actually restores one's human feelings, human rights, human incentives, human, his talent.

I'm for truth, no matter who tells it. I'm for justice, no matter who it's for or against.

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.

I did a lot of things as a Muslim that I am sorry for now.

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.

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.

Even as a Muslim minister in the Muslim movement, I have always said that I would work with any organization.

Segregation is that which is forced upon an inferior by a superior. Separation is done voluntarily by two equals.

I am for violence if non-violence means we continue postponing a solution to the American black man's problem just to avoid violence.

For me, my 'X' replaced the white slave master name of 'Little' which some blue-eyed devil named Little had imposed on my parental forebears.

The future belongs to those who prepare for it today.

Power doesn't back up in the face of a smile, or in the face of a threat of some kind of nonviolent loving action. It's not the nature of power to back up in the face of anything but some more power.

Renaissance or the reawakening of Europe. And this reawakening actually involved an era during which the people of Europe, who were coming out of the Dark Ages, were then adopting the value system of the people in the East, in the, of the oriental society.

The Honorable Elijah Muhammad teaches us that God, now, is about to establish a kingdom on this earth, based upon brotherhood and peace. And the white man is against brotherhood, and the white man is against peace.

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 the next time.

In the past, the greatest weapon the white man has had has been his ability to divide and conquer. If I take my hand and slap you, you don't even feel it. It might sting you because these digits are separated. But all I have to do to put you back in your place is bring those digits together.

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.

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.

Envy blinds men and makes it impossible for them to think clearly.

You can't hate the roots of a tree and not hate the tree. You can't hate Africa and not hate yourself.

In all our deeds, the proper value and respect for time determines success or failure.

My Alma mater was books, a good library... I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity.

When we see that our problem is so complicated and so all-encompassing in its intent and content, then we realize that it is no longer a Negro problem, confined only to the American Negro; that it is no longer an American problem, confined only to America, but it is a problem for humanity.

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.

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.

If you’re not ready to die for it, put the word ‘freedom’ out of your vocabulary.

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

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.

Power never takes a back step only in the face of more power.

Anytime you find someone more successful than you are especially when youre both engaged in the same business you know theyre doing something that you arent.

History is a peoples memory and without a memory man is demoted to the lower animals.

We cannot think of being acceptable to others until we have first proven acceptable to ourselves.

Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today.

If you have no critics you'll likely have no success.

Power in defense of freedom is greater than power in behalf of tyranny and oppression.

There is no more apartheid in South Africa than in the United States.

If you don't stand for something you will fall for anything.

A man who stands for nothing will fall for anything.

You don't have to be a man to fight for freedom. All you have to do is to be an intelligent human being.

The black man in Africa had mastered the arts and sciences. He knew the course of the stars in the universe before the man up in Europe knew that the earth wasn't flat.