African-American human rights activist (1925-1965)
Power in defense of freedom is greater than power in behalf of tyranny and oppression.
MALCOLM X
Malcolm X Speaks
Many of us want to be nonviolent and we talk very loudly, you know, about being nonviolent. Here in Harlem, where there are probably more black people concentrated than any place in the world, some talk that nonviolent talk too. But we find that they aren't nonviolent with each other. You can go out to Harlem Hospital, where there are more black patients than any hospital in the world, and see them going in there all cut up and shot up and busted up where they got violent with each other.
MALCOLM X
Advice to the Youth of Mississippi, Dec. 31, 1964
Look at the American Revolution in 1776. That revolution was for what? For land. Why did they want land? Independence. How was it carried out? Bloodshed. Number one, it was based on land, the basis of independence. And the only way they could get it was bloodshed. The French Revolution -- what was it based on? The land-less against the landlord. What was it for? Land. How did they get it? Bloodshed. Was no love lost; was no compromise; was no negotiation. I'm telling you, you don't know what a revolution is. 'Cause when you find out what it is, you'll get back in the alley; you'll get out of the way. The Russian Revolution -- what was it based on? Land. The land-less against the landlord. How did they bring it about? Bloodshed. You haven't got a revolution that doesn't involve bloodshed. And you're afraid to bleed. I said, you're afraid to bleed.
MALCOLM X
Message to the Grass Roots, Nov. 10, 1963
I'm sorry to say that the subject I most disliked was mathematics. I have thought about it. I think the reason was that mathematics leaves no room for argument. If you made a mistake, that was all there was to it.
MALCOLM X
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
I don't think it is fair to tell our people to be nonviolent unless someone is out there making the Klan and the Citizens Council and these other groups also be nonviolent.
MALCOLM X
Advice to the Youth of Mississippi, Dec. 31, 1964
It is only after slavery and prison that the sweetest appreciation of freedom can come.
MALCOLM X
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
If we don't cast a ballot, it's going to end up in a situation where we're going to have to cast a bullet. It's either a ballot or a bullet.
MALCOLM X
speech at Cory Methodist Church, Cleveland, Ohio, "The Ballot or the Bullet", Apr. 3, 1964
The philosophy of black nationalism involves a re-education program in the black community in regards to economics. 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. Then you wonder why where you live is always a ghetto or a slum area. And where you and I are concerned, not only do we lose it when we spend it out of the community, but the white man has got all our stores in the community tied up; so that though we spend it in the community, at sundown the man who runs the store takes it over across town somewhere.
MALCOLM X
speech at Cory Methodist Church, Cleveland, Ohio, "The Ballot or the Bullet", Apr. 3, 1964
Soon now, as the Negro awakens a little more and sees the vise that he's in, sees the bag that he's in, sees the real game that he's in, then the Negro's going to develop a new tactic.
MALCOLM X
speech at Cory Methodist Church, Cleveland, Ohio, "The Ballot or the Bullet", Apr. 3, 1964
Anytime anyone is enslaved, or in any way deprived of his liberty, if that person is a human being, as far as I am concerned he is justified to resort to whatever methods necessary to bring about his liberty again.
MALCOLM X
Oxford Union Debate, Dec. 3, 1964
Any time you find the government involved in a conspiracy to violate the citizenship or the civil rights of a people, then you are wasting your time going to that government expecting redress. Instead, you have to take that government to the World Court and accuse it of genocide and all of the other crimes that it is guilty of today.
MALCOLM X
speech at the Congress for Racial Equality in Detroit, Michigan, Apr. 12, 1964
The powers that be use the press to give the devil an angelic image and give the image of the devil to the one who's really angelic. They make oppression and exploitation and war actually look like an act of humanitarianism. This is not the kind of extremism that I support or that I go along with.
MALCOLM X
Oxford Union Debate, Dec. 3, 1964
Whether we are Christians or Muslims or nationalists or agnostics or atheists, we must first learn to forget our differences. If we have differences, let us differ in the closet; when we come out in front, let us not have anything to argue about until we get finished arguing with the man. If the late President Kennedy could get together with Khrushchev and exchange some wheat, we certainly have more in common with each other than Kennedy and Khrushchev had with each other.
MALCOLM X
speech at Cory Methodist Church, Cleveland, Ohio, "The Ballot or the Bullet", Apr. 3, 1964
I read once, passingly, about a man named Shakespeare. I only read about him passingly, but I remember one thing he wrote, that kinda moved me. He put it in the mouth of Hamlet, I think it was, who said "to be or not to be". He was in doubt about something. Whether it was nobler, in the mind of man, to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune -- moderation -- or to take up arms against the sea of troubles and, by opposing, end them. And I go for that; if you take up arms you'll end it, but if you sit around and wait for the one who is in power to make up his mind that he should end it, you'll be waiting a long time.
MALCOLM X
Oxford Union Debate, Dec. 3, 1964
I'm for truth, no matter who tells it.
MALCOLM X
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
When my mother was pregnant with me, she told me later, a party of hooded Ku Klux Klan riders galloped up to our home in Omaha, Nebraska, one night. Surrounding the house, brandishing their shotguns and rifles, they shouted for my father to come out. My mother went to the front door and opened it. Standing where they could see her pregnant condition, she told them that she was alone with her three small children, and that my father was away, preaching, in Milwaukee. The Klansmen shouted threats and warnings at her that we had better get out of town because "the good Christian white people" were not going to stand for my father's spreading trouble" among the "good" Negroes of Omaha with the "back to Africa" preachings of Marcus Garvey.
MALCOLM X
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
They came up with a civil rights bill in 1964, supposedly to solve our problem, and after the bill was signed, three civil rights workers were murdered in cold blood. And the FBI head, Hoover, admits that they know who did it, they've known ever since it happened, and they've done nothing about it. Civil rights bill down the drain.
MALCOLM X
Oxford Union Debate, Dec. 3, 1964
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.
MALCOLM X
Malcolm X Speaks
I myself would go for nonviolence if it was consistent, if everybody was going to be nonviolent all the time. I'd say, okay, let's get with it, we'll all be nonviolent. But I don't go along with any kind of nonviolence unless everybody's going to be nonviolent. If they make the Ku Klux Klan nonviolent, I'll be nonviolent. If they make the White Citizens Council nonviolent, I'll be nonviolent. But as long as you've got somebody else not being nonviolent, I don't want anybody coming to me talking any nonviolent talk.
MALCOLM X
Advice to the Youth of Mississippi, Dec. 31, 1964
They call me "a teacher, a fomenter of violence." I would say point blank, "That is a lie. I'm not for wanton violence, I'm for justice."
MALCOLM X
The Autobiography of Malcolm X