African-American human rights activist (1925-1965)
A ballot is like a bullet. You don't throw your ballots until you see a target, and if that target is not within your reach, keep your ballot in your pocket.
MALCOLM X
speech at Cory Methodist Church, Cleveland, Ohio, "The Ballot or the Bullet", Apr. 3, 1964
They call me "a teacher, a fomenter of violence." I would say point blank, "That is a lie. I'm not for wanton violence, I'm for justice."
MALCOLM X
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
A revolution is bloody. Revolution is hostile. Revolution knows no compromise. Revolution overturns and destroys everything that gets in its way. And you, sitting around here like a knot on the wall, saying, "I'm going to love these folks no matter how much they hate me." No, you need a revolution. Whoever heard of a revolution where they lock arms, as Reverend Cleage was pointing out beautifully, singing "We Shall Overcome"? Just tell me. You don't do that in a revolution. You don't do any singing; you're too busy swinging.
MALCOLM X
Message to the Grass Roots, Nov. 10, 1963
You don't have a revolution in which you love your enemy, and you don't have a revolution in which you are begging the system of exploitation to integrate you into it. Revolutions overturn systems. Revolutions destroy systems.
MALCOLM X
speech at the Congress for Racial Equality in Detroit, Michigan, Apr. 12, 1964
No one is exploited economically as thoroughly as you and I, because in most countries where people are exploited they know it. You and I are in this country being exploited and sometimes we don't know it.
MALCOLM X
speech at founding rally of the Organization of Afro-American Unity, Jun. 28, 1964
The problem facing our people here in America is bigger than all other personal or organizational differences. Therefore, as leaders, we must stop worrying about the threat that we seem to think we pose to each other's personal prestige, and concentrate our united efforts toward solving the unending hurt that is being done daily to our people here in America.
MALCOLM X
A Declaration of Independence, Mar. 12, 1964
You trust them (white Americans), and I don't. You studied what he wanted you to learn about him in schools. I studied him in the streets and in prison, where you see the truth.
MALCOLM X
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
We want to have just an off-the-cuff chat between you and me -- us. We want to talk right down to earth in a language that everybody here can easily understand. We all agree tonight, all of the speakers have agreed, that America has a very serious problem. Not only does America have a very serious problem, but our people have a very serious problem. America's problem is us. We're her problem. The only reason she has a problem is she doesn't want us here. And every time you look at yourself, be you black, brown, red, or yellow -- a so-called Negro -- you represent a person who poses such a serious problem for America because you're not wanted. Once you face this as a fact, then you can start plotting a course that will make you appear intelligent, instead of unintelligent.
MALCOLM X
Message to the Grass Roots, Nov. 10, 1963
The question tonight, as I understand it, is "The Negro Revolt, and Where Do We Go From Here? or What Next?" In my little humble way of understanding it, it points toward either the ballot or the bullet.
MALCOLM X
speech at Cory Methodist Church, Cleveland, Ohio, "The Ballot or the Bullet", Apr. 3, 1964
Instead of us airing our differences in public, we have to realize we're all the same family. And when you have a family squabble, you don't get out on the sidewalk. If you do, everybody calls you uncouth, unrefined, uncivilized, savage. If you don't make it at home, you settle it at home; you get in the closet -- argue it out behind closed doors. And then when you come out on the street, you pose a common front, a united front. And this is what we need to do in the community, and in the city, and in the state. We need to stop airing our differences in front of the white man. Put the white man out of our meetings, number one, and then sit down and talk shop with each other. All you gotta do.
MALCOLM X
Message to the Grass Roots, Nov. 10, 1963
I don't believe in any form of unjustified extremism! But when a man is exercising extremism -- a human being is exercising extremism -- in defense of liberty for human beings it's no vice, and when one is moderate in the pursuit of justice for human beings I say he is a sinner.
MALCOLM X
Oxford Union Debate, Dec. 3, 1964
I don't encourage any act of murder nor do I glorify in anyone's death, but I do think that when the white public uses it's press to magnify the fact that there are lives of white hostages at stake, they don't say "hostages," every paper says "white hostages." They give me the impression that they attach more importance to a white hostage and a white death, than they do the death of a human being, despite the color of his skin.
MALCOLM X
Oxford Union Debate, Dec. 3, 1964
They controlled it so tight -- they told those Negroes what time to hit town, how to come, where to stop, what signs to carry, what song to sing, what speech they could make, and what speech they couldn't make; and then told them to get out town by sundown. And everyone of those Toms was out of town by sundown. Now I know you don't like my saying this. But I can back it up. It was a circus, a performance that beat anything Hollywood could ever do, the performance of the year.
MALCOLM X
comments on the March on Washington, Message to the Grass Roots, Nov. 10, 1963
Many people who have been in positions of power in the past don't realize that the power, the centers of power, are changing. When you're in a position of power for a long time you get used to using your yardstick, and you take it for granted that because you've forced your yardstick on others, that everyone is still using the same yardstick. So that your definition of extremism usually applies to everyone, but nowadays times are changing, and the center of power is changing. People in the past who weren't in a position to have a yardstick or use a yardstick of their own are using their own yardstick now. You use one and they use another. In the past when the oppressor had one stick and the oppressed used that same stick, today the oppressed are sort of shaking the shackles and getting yardsticks of their own, so when they say extremism they don't mean what you do, and when you say extremism you don't mean what they do. There are entirely two different meanings.
MALCOLM X
Oxford Union Debate, Dec. 3, 1964
Any time Uncle Sam, with all his machinery for warfare, is held to a draw by some rice eaters, he's lost the battle.
MALCOLM X
speech at Cory Methodist Church, Cleveland, Ohio, "The Ballot or the Bullet", Apr. 3, 1964
Anytime you live in a society supposedly based upon law and it doesn't enforce its own laws because the color of a man's skin happens to be wrong, then I say those people are justified to resort to any means necessary to bring about justice when the government can't give them justice.
MALCOLM X
Oxford Union Debate, Dec. 3, 1964
Any kind of action that you are ever involved in that's designed to protect the lives and property of our mistreated people in this country, we're with you 1,000 percent. And if you don't feel you're qualified to do it, we have some brothers who will slip in ... and help train you and show you how to equip yourself and let you know how to deal with the man who deals with you.
MALCOLM X
Advice to the Youth of Mississippi, Dec. 31, 1964
If the government thinks I am wrong for saying this, then let the government start doing its job.
MALCOLM X
A Declaration of Independence, Mar. 12, 1964
Imagine that -- a country that's supposed to be a democracy, supposed to be for freedom and all of that kind of stuff when they want to draft you and put you in the army and send you to Saigon to fight for them -- and then you've got to turn around and all night long discuss how you're going to just get a right to register and vote without being murdered. Why, that's the most hypocritical government since the world began!
MALCOLM X
Advice to the Youth of Mississippi, Dec. 31, 1964
First, what is a revolution? Sometimes I'm inclined to believe that many of our people are using this word "revolution" loosely, without taking careful consideration [of] what this word actually means, and what its historic characteristics are. When you study the historic nature of revolutions, the motive of a revolution, the objective of a revolution, and the result of a revolution, and the methods used in a revolution, you may change words. You may devise another program. You may change your goal and you may change your mind.
MALCOLM X
Message to the Grass Roots, Nov. 10, 1963