Quotes by Malcolm X

Good education, housing and jobs are imperatives for the Negroes, and I shall support them in their fight to win these objectives, but I shall tell the Negroes that while these are necessary, they cannot solve the main Negro problem.

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

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.

Power doesnt back up in the face of a smile, or in the face of a threat of some kind of nonviolent loving action. Its not the nature of power to back up in the face of anything but some more power.

If you have no critics youll likely have no success.

I believe in the brotherhood of all men, but I dont believe in wasting brotherhood on anyone who doesnt want to practice it with me. Brotherhood is a two-way street.

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

In the Muslim world, I had seen that men with white complexions were more genuinely brotherly than anyone else had ever been. That... was the start of a radical alteration in my whole outlook about white men.

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

You dont have to be a man to fight for freedom. All you have to do is to be an intelligent human being.

In the Bible, God offered the Pharaoh freedom if he would just let the oppressed people free to go to the land of milk and honey. But the Pharaoh disobeyed, and he was destroyed.

The future belongs to those who prepare for it today.

“Im for truth, no matter who tells it. Im for justice, no matter who it is for or against. Im a human being, first and foremost, and as such Im for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.”

“Truth is on the side of the oppressed.”

“The greatest mistake of the movement has been trying to organize a sleeping people around specific goals. You have to wake the people up first, then youll get action.”

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

“I’ve had enough of someone else’s propaganda… 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.”

“Time is on the side of the oppressed today, its against the oppressor. Truth is on the side of the oppressed today, its against the oppressor. You dont need anything else.”

“When Pope Pius XII died, LIFE magazine carried a picture of him in his private study kneeling before a black Christ. What was the source of their information? All white people who have studied history and geography know that Christ was a black man. Only the poor, brainwashed American Negro has been made to believe that Christ was white, to maneuver him into worshiping the white man. 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.”

“It is only after the deepest darkness that the greatest joy can come”