Malcolm X Quotes

Now in speaking like this, it doesn't mean that we're anti-white, but it does mean we're anti-exploitation, we're anti-degradation, we're anti-oppression. And if the white man doesn't want us to be anti-him, let him stop oppressing and exploiting and degrading us.

Nowhere in history has the white man been brotherly toward anyone.

White women and black men have it both ways. They can act as oppressor or ... and oppression of others.

There’s no question whatsoever that conquered people have been treated in a terrible way. Being conquered by the Romans was not a fate you would wish on anyone. But the fact is that the net result has been that those parts of Europe conquered by the Romans have been the most advanced parts of Europe for centuries. Similarly, when someone black says . . . ‘I’m worse off because of slavery,’ there’s no way in hell you can say that with a straight face. If you’re going to base reparations on the difference between where blacks today would be if it were not for slavery, then blacks would have to pay reparations to white people.

We have two evils to fight, capitalism and racism. We must destroy both racism and capitalism.

Race is not particularly interesting to me. Power is. Who has power and who doesn't. Slavery interests me because it's an incredible violation that has not stopped. It's necessary to talk about that. Race is a diversion.

There is no such thing as white superiority or black inferiority…all people are equal before God…there may not be under any circumstances a political policy based on oppression, discrimination and exploitation…the task of the Church is to protest against unjust laws.

I don't believe in segregation. I believe in slavery.

Solidarity forever …. We stand outcast and starving from the wonders we have made.

The fight against racism must be seen as a revolutionary one.

I've always found the rhetoric of mainstream civil rights leaders and organizations to be far too timid, accommodationist, and gradualist. It always seemed to me that they behaved like meek and gentle supplicants begging the oppressor for a few crumbs of justice, for a few molecules of citizenship rights.

In order to cry out for my black brothers, I had to hate the police.

Black history won't stop no bullets.

I believe you should tell the story of injustices, of inequalities, of bad conditions, so that the people as a whole in this country really face the problems that people who are pushed to the point of striking know all about, but others know practically nothing about.

I wear the black for the poor and the beaten down, Livin' in the hopeless, hungry side of town, I wear it for the prisoner who has long paid for his crime, But is there because he's a victim of the times. I wear the black for those who never read

Goddamnit, look! We live here and they live there. We black and they white. They got things and we ain't. They do things and we can't. It's just like livin' in jail.

White folks' greed runs a world in need.

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.

If a Negro got legs he ought to use them. Sit down too long, somebody will figure out a way to tie them up.

The camera could be a very powerful instrument against discrimination, against poverty, against racism.

We don't hate nobody because of their color. We hate oppression!

An integrated cup of coffee isn't sufficient pay for four hundred years of slave labor.

Today I see more clearly than yesterday that the back of the problem of race and color lies a greater problem which both obscures and implements it: and that is the fact that so many civilized persons are willing to live in comfort even if the price of this is poverty, ignorance, and disease of the majority of their fellow men.

If President Obama wants to keep calling for protests, then that will be his legacy, one of division, rich versus poor, old versus young, black versus white, always dividing. That's what you get under President Obama.

Any woman who has a great deal to offer the world is in trouble. And if she's a black woman, seh's in deep trouble.