Malcolm X Quotes

Any society based on domination supports and condones violence.

If we accept the rule of those who think they are the bosses and lords of Mexico, nothing will change for the people on the bottom.

As there is oppression of the majority such oppression will be fought with increasing hatred.

I just don't believe that when people are being unjustly oppressed that they should let someone else set rules for them by which they can come out from under that oppression.

The people in power will not disappear voluntarily, giving flowers to the cops just isn't going to work. This thinking is fostered by the establishment; they like nothing better than love and nonviolence.

All colonies are oppressed peoples.

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.

A man can't ride your back unless it's bent.

I talked a lot early on in my career about intersectionality and how racism and classism and sexism and homophobia and capitalism are all connected with each other, and they're these crazy systems that are feeding on each other and are also damaging. I can't even go into the whole spectrum of it. But I feel like kids today are so much more savvy about that conversation. And I'm so thrilled when I get to meet younger people who are doing that so much better than I did.

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

Protest and anger practically always derives from hope, and the shouting out against injustice is always in the hope of those injustices being somewhat corrected and a little more justice established.

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.

The oppressed never free themselves - they do not have the necessary strengths.

It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of nonviolence to cover impotence.

In a war situation or where violence and injustice are prevalent, poetry is called upon to be something more than a thing of beauty.

Force is not a remedy.

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

All oppression creates a state of war.

Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

I'm not violent, I don't believe in killing people, but standing up for yourself, speaking out against injustice, is another form of vengeance.

Women have to be extremely careful about choosing something that they consider an act of defiance that can really be used to further their enslavement.

Domination delegates the physical violence on which it rests to the dominated.

The quietly pacifist peaceful always die to make room for men who shout.

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.