Malcolm X Quotes

I ain’t got no quarrel with the Viet Cong. No Viet Cong ever called me nigger.

The Ballot or the Bullet

I met Malcolm the month before he was killed. He deeply changed my mind about America.

'The Autobiography of Malcolm X.' I've used it to demonstrate racial attitudes to people who I thought needed a better understanding of all human beings. Malcolm was not a racist. He was not looking for revenge. He realized that kindness and goodness did not come from any one kind of person.

I ordered that they use any means necessary, including illegal means, to accomplish this goal. . . . The president of the United States can never admit that.

Malcolm X's separatist ideas were situational. If you think about where African-Americans were in the 1940s and 1950s, we needed to step away because that force, which is still present but more subdued, was very in your face, and we needed to take a step back just to get some clarity.

I grew up in the sixties watching B.B. King and Tito Puente and Miles Davis and Coltrane, everybody, Marvin Gaye, Jimi. And at the same time, with my left eye I was watching Dolores Huerta, Cesar Chavez, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Mother Teresa.

My dad always associated information with liberation. He was very much in that Malcolm X tradition.

At 16, I went to Smith College in Massachusetts and that was right after the peak of the civil-rights movement and all the rest. It was an era when students were making demands and many black students were closer to the teachings of Malcolm X, or what they thought were his teachings.

I always tell my students that Malcolm X came both to his spirituality and to his consciousness as a thinker when he had solitude to read. Unfortunately, tragically, like so many young black males, that solitude only came in prison.

In November 1963, [Malcolm X] gives his famous message to the grassroots address in Detroit, which really kind of marks off the real turning point in his own development.

Christians got a lot of work to do. But, the spirit of Dorothy Day is alive. Martin Luther King is still alive. Malcolm X and the prophetic Islamic tradition is still alive. We can't lose sight of those prophetic religious folk who, even given their kin in the same tradition, says, you all are wrong on this, but we're still in the same tradition.

I identify... with the ideas that Malcolm X stood for.

[James] Baldwin was a celebrity. A TV show like Kenneth Clark could put him aside of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. He was, at least, one of the three most important spokesmen of the movement and of the black community.

Malcolm X raised my consciousness about myself and my people and other people more than any person I know. I knew him before he became Malcolm X.

In Singapore, Malcolm X type of activity would be extremely difficult because the government can be very harsh on lawbreakers.

People look at me like I should have been like Malcolm X or Martin Luther King or Rosa Parks. I should have seen life like that and stay out of trouble, and don't do this and don't do that. But it's hard to live up to some people's expectations.

The first time I heard Sam Cooke was in the 'Malcom X' film. I was with my father, and that's the first time I heard his song. I remember my father telling me the story of Sam Cooke.

When white supremacy becomes institutional, it begins to harm the very people who are not simply outside of it because of their race, it begins to harm the folk who look like the folk who want to be in charge. Martin Luther King, Jr., understood this, Malcolm X understood this, James Baldwin really understood this.

I believe that the FBI clearly was concerned, wanted to monitor and disrupt Malcolm X wherever possible.

Hip-hop in the '90s began moving towards the Nation of Islam and the 5 Percenters, black nationalist movements; very much so, these movements embraced a form of Islam: Malcom X's form of Islam prior to his change.

I always had a deep affection for Malcolm and felt that he had a great ability to put his finger on the existence and the root of the problem. He was an eloquent spokesman for his point of view and no one can honestly doubt that Malcolm had a great concern for the problems we face as a race.

Labels want my name beside a X like Malcolm

I was never named in the early years as having anything to do with the assassination of Malcolm.

[Malcolm X] had said a great deal about nonviolence, criticizing nonviolence, and saying that I approved of Negro men and women being bitten by dogs and the fire hoses, and I say, say go on and not defend yourself. I think this kind of response grew out of the build up, all of the talk about my being a sort of polished Uncle Tom.