Malcolm X Quotes

Whereas the only real solution to the race problem in this country is a solution that involves individual self improvement and collective self improvement in, whereas our own, wherein our own people are concerned.

If black people use their resources properly, they can become as competitive as any group in society - take control of our neighborhoods, our businesses, our schools, including our teachers. The only thing keeping black people from doing it is this idiotic idea about integration, about being racially balanced.

I want to see us push for economical and educational advancement in communities of color and low-income communities, and I want to see our relationships between our communities and our law enforcement be advanced.

Come forward as servants of Islam, organise the people economically, socially, educationally and politically and I am sure that you will be a power that will be accepted by everybody.

You know where entrepreneurship in my opinion has to go? Into the inner city.

When I was 17, I worked in a mentoring program in Harlem designed to improve the community. That's when I first gained an appreciation of the Harlem Renaissance, a time when African-Americans rose to prominence in American culture. For the first time, they were taken seriously as artists, musicians, writers, athletes, and as political thinkers.

The Honorable Elijah Muhammad says that we should be separate, all right, but in this separate state or separate existence, the black man should be given the opportunity and the incentive to do for himself what the white man has done for himself.

We need to take responsibility and educate people. That's why black folks don't like me. I always say it's our responsibility to make safe neighborhoods. It's our job to get them cleaned up.

I want to work with non-profits that stimulate growth to the community. Whether it is economic growth, intellectual, or freedom.

You can't rise as a class. You have to rise individually. It's what many of the civil rights-era people don't understand.

I will begin a new program to get private enterprise into the ghetto and the ghetto into private enterprise. I call it “Black Capitalism.” More black ownership of business and land and homes can be the multiplier of pride that will end our racial strife.

The political philosophy of black nationalism means: we must control the politics and the politicians of our community.

What we, as black people, need to do is we need to worry about our education.

With abolition, it's necessary to destroy systems of oppression. But it's equally necessary to put at the forefront our conversations about creation. When we fight for justice, what exactly do we want for our communities?

I think in order to achieve real change, we as the black community need to come up with real asks and we have to determine, what do we actually want? We obviously want some social reform, on police brutality and things like that. We also need political changes. But it's more than voting. What are we as black people asking of these politicians?

I first learned the power of a Labour government to transform lives growing up in my hometown of Stockport.

I think the black community has a lot to work on internally with what they deem successful.

We have a responsibility to do better as black people in this country. I don't care how white people look at you - I care that we have a one-trillion-dollar spending base, and if you want to see change, you have to start to focus on, economically, how can we change our communities.

I raise my stein to the builder who can remove ghettos without removing people as I hail the chef who can make omelets without breaking eggs.

The cornerstones of this country's operation are economic and political strength and power. The black man doesn't have the economic strength - and it will take time for him to build it. But right now the American black man has the political strength and power to change his destiny overnight.

I remember the president-elect [Donald Trump] saying that I'm going to do something to dramatically, positively change communities, particularly in urban areas, and I think we've got to hold his feet to the fire to all those issues as well as all the issues that you addressed, you and many others addressed yesterday as it relates to criminal justice, as it relates to voting oppression.

[James] Baldwin said the real question is not when there will be the first Negro president in this country. The important question is what country he's going to be the president of.

It's undeniable there's been remarkable progress for African-Americans in this country. They've been elected senators and governors and running major corporations. But obviously we still have a long way to go.

A lot of people want to change the world, but only a few people want to change themselves. When it comes to the issue of race in America, we have to do both.

Women need to see ourselves as individuals capable of creating change. That is what political and economic power is all about: having a voice, being able to shape the future. Women's absence from decision-making positions has deprived the country of a necessary perspective.