El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, better known as Malcolm X, was an American Muslim minister and human rights activist who was a popular figure during the civil rights movement. He is best known for his staunch and controversial black racial advocacy, and for time spent as the vocal spokesperson of the Nation of Islam. These Malcolm X Quotes on oppression, media, Islam, etc, will motivate you.
Best Malcolm X Quotes
- “We need more light about each other. Light creates understanding, understanding creates love, love creates patience, and patience creates unity.” ~ Malcolm X, Malcolm X quotes on love
- “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.” ~ Malcolm X
- “One of the first things I think young people, especially nowadays, should learn is how to see for yourself and listen for yourself and think for yourself. Then you can come to an intelligent decision for yourself. If you form the habit of going by what you hear others say about someone or going by what others think about someone, instead of searching that thing out for yourself and seeing for yourself, you will be walking west when you think you’re going east, and you will be walking east when you think you’re going west.” ~ Malcolm X
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“A wise man can play the part of a clown, but a clown can’t play the part of a wise man.” ~ Malcolm X
- “The media’s the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that’s power. Because they control the minds of the masses.” ~ Malcolm X, Malcolm X quotes on media
- “If you stick a knife nine inches into my back and pull it out three inches, that is not progress. Even if you pull it all the way out, that is not progress. Progress is healing the wound, and America hasn’t even begun to pull out the knife.” ~ Malcolm X
- “You’re not supposed to be so blind with patriotism that you can’t face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who says it.” ~ Malcolm X Quotes
- “When the people who are in power want to use again, create an image, to justify something that’s bad, they use the press. And they’ll use the press to create a humanitarian image, for a devil, or a devil image for a humanitarian. They’ll take a person who’s a victim of the crime, and make it appear he’s the criminal, and they’ll take the criminal and make it appear that he’s the victim of the crime.” ~ Malcolm X
- “When ‘I’ replaced with ‘We’, even the illness becomes wellness.” ~ Malcolm X
- “If you don’t stand for something you will fall for anything.” ~ Malcolm X
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“Be peaceful, be courteous, obey the law, respect everyone; but if someone puts his hand on you, send him to the cemetery.” ~ Malcolm X
- “When you live in a poor neighborhood, you are living in an area where you have poor schools. When you have poor schools, you have poor teachers. When you have poor teachers, you get a poor education. When you get a poor education, you can only work in a poor-paying job. And that poor-paying job enables you to live again in a poor neighborhood. So, it’s a very vicious cycle.” ~ Malcolm X
- “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.” ~ Malcolm X
- “You and I have never seen democracy; all we’ve seen is hypocrisy.” ~ Malcolm X
- “Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today.” ~ Malcolm X
- “If we are extremists, then we are not ashamed of it, for the conditions that our people suffer are extreme, and extreme illness can not be cured with moderate medicine” ~ Malcolm X
- “Only a fool would let his enemy teach his children.” ~ Malcolm X
- “You’re living at a time of extremism, a time of revolution
A time where there’s got to be a change. People in power have misused it
And now there has to be a change and a better world has to be built
And the only way is going to be built is with extreme methods
And I for one will join with anyone, don’t care what color you are
As long as you want change this miserable condition that exists on this earth” ~ Malcolm X -
“Learn to see, listen, and think for yourself.” ~ Malcolm X
- “I’m for truth, no matter who tells it. I’m for justice, no matter who it is for or against. I’m a human being, first and foremost, and as such I’m for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.” ~ Malcolm X
- “I believe that there will be ultimately be a clash between the oppressed and those who do the oppressing. I believe that there will be a clash between those who want freedom, justice and equality for everyone and those who want to continue the system of exploitation. I believe that there will be that kind of clash, but I don’t think it will be based on the color of the skin.” ~ Malcolm X
- “You can’t separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom.” ~ Malcolm X
- “There can be no black-white unity until there is first some black unity… We cannot think of uniting with others, until after we have first united among ourselves. We cannot think of being acceptable to others until we have first proven acceptable to ourselves.” ~ Malcolm X
- “If you form the habit of taking what someone else says about a thing without checking it out for yourself, you’ll find that other people will have you hating your friends and loving your enemies.” ~ Malcolm X
- “The most disrespected person in America is the black woman. The most unprotected person in America is the black woman. The most neglected person in America is the black woman.” ~ Malcolm X
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“The mother is the first teacher of the child. The message she gives that child, that child gives to the world.” ~ Malcolm X
- “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.” ~ Malcolm X
- “That’s not a chip on my shoulder, that’s your foot on my neck.”
- “For tommorow belongs
to those that prepare for it today.” ~ 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.” ~ Malcolm X
- “Education is an important element in the struggle for human rights. It is the means to help our children and thereby increase self-respect. Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today.” ~ Malcolm X
- “America’s greatest crime against the black man was not slavery or lynching, but that he was taught to wear a mask of self-hate and self-doubt.” ~ Malcolm X
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“One day, may we all meet together in the light of understanding.” ~ Malcolm X
- “The greatest mistake of the movement has been trying to organize sleeping people around specific goals. You have to wake the people up first, then you’ll get action.” ~ Malcolm X
- “When you hear me say “by any means necessary,” I mean exactly that. I believe in anything that is necessary to correct unjust conditions-political, economic, social, physical, anything that is necessary.” ~ Malcolm X
- “If you have no critics you’ll likely have no success.” ~ Malcolm X
- “Just as a tree without roots is dead, a people without history or cultural roots also becomes a dead people.” ~ Malcolm X
- “As long as a white man does it, it’s alright, a black man is supposed to have no feelings. But when a black man strikes back he’s an extremist, he’s supposed to sit passively and have no feelings, be nonviolent, and love his enemy no matter what kind of attack, verbal or otherwise, he’s supposed to take it. But if he stands up in any way and tries to defend himself, then he’s an extremist.” ~ Malcolm X
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“People don’t realize how a man’s whole life can be changed by one book.” ~ Malcolm X
- “I’m for truth, no matter who tells it. I’m for justice, no matter who it’s for or against.” ~ Malcolm X
- “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.” ~ Malcolm X
- “It”s good to keep wide-open ears and listen to what everybody else has to say, but when you come to make a decision, you have to weigh all of what you”ve heard on its own, and place it where it belongs, and come to a decision for yourself; you”ll never regret it. But if you form the habit of taking what someone else says about a thing without checking it out for yourself, you”ll find that other people will have you hating your friends and loving your enemies.” ~ Malcolm X
- “I believe in human beings, and that all human beings should be respected as such, regardless of their color.” ~ Malcolm X
- “Read absolutely everything you get your hands on because you’ll never know where you’ll get an idea from.” ~ Malcolm X
- “If not now then when, if not me then who?” ~ Malcolm X
