Malcolm X Quotes

Oppression costs the oppressor too much if the oppressed stand up and protest.

Don’t play with us. If you’re not going to give us justice, let us go so that we may help ourselves….We can’t want for benevolent white people to give us handouts.

The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house.

You cannot play the Song of Freedom on an instrument of oppression.

I live in the United States, but I do not know exactly where. My address is wherever there is a fight against oppression. My address is like my shoes; it travels with me. I abide where there is a fight against wrong.

I think history repeats itself. There's a constant conversation between the oppressed and the oppressor. No matter what your field is, whether it's gender equality, the Time's Up movement, or diversity casting, it's always going to be a back-and-forth battle.

As I grew older and got into the late teens and early 20s, I wanted to be a voice of the people. You know, getting locked up all the time and going through so much oppression and seeing it all around myself, I wanted to be a voice for it.

I think Hong Kong people's struggle for democracy is similar to David versus Goliath. But this struggle is not just about me.

There are men put on this earth to make laws designed to break the spirits of men. There are those put here to have their spirits broken by those put here to break them. Then there are those who are here to break the laws that break the men who break the spirits of other men. I am one of those men. - Harry West

The cry of the Have-Nots has never been "give us our hearts," but always "get off our backs"; they ask not for love but for breathing space.

Fear is the greatest form of oppression. The best way to rise up in protest is to live your life to its fullest!

We say no to the peace that keeps us on our knees, no to the peace that keeps us in chains, no to the false peace that denies the values and contributions of our peoples.

I'm not going to sit around and be peace and love with somebody's boot on my neck.

We're not trying to take power away or rule anybody - we're just trying to get up from under the rulers.

Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can't ride you unless your back is bent.

Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them.

For some reason, I seem to be bothered whenever I see acts of injustice and assaults on people's civil liberties. I imagine what I write in the future will follow in that vein. Whether it's fiction or non-fiction.

But you know, the system almost destroyed itself while it was goin' on trying to destroy us.

Look at the forces against me. They don't want me out. They're afraid I'll cause trouble if I get out.

You look at the whole Human Rights questions, I happened to be there at just the right time when the country was awakening - this goes to the first question you asked - the whole country was awakening to a hundred years of injustice that hadn't been resolved yet.

I feel that man-hating is an honorable and viable political act, that the oppressed have a right to class-hatred against the class that is oppressing them.

Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.

Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself.

An oppressed people will always rise.

Probably I understand very much the people who rise against injustice.