Malcolm X Quotes

Until the white man in America sits down and talks with The Honorable Elijah Muhammad, he won't even know what the race problem - what makes the race problem what it is.

Although the race problem may seem to lie dormant at times, it continually exists, lives on and on and sometimes rages with all the fury of a jungle beast. It gnaws at the very vitals of our existence, in time it will sap our strength and destroy the greatness of our American way of life unless solved properly and permanently.

As long as you say I'm the guy who's real about it, I have no problem being the person who people look to to talk about race.

I know that my race must change. We cannot hold our own with the white men as we are. We only ask an even chance to live as other men live. We ask to be recognized as men. We ask that the same law shall work alike on all men. If an Indian breaks the law, punish him by the law. If a white man breaks the law, punish him also.

Why must we always talk about race anyway? Can't we just be human beings? And Professor Hunk replied - that is exactly what white privilege is, that you can say that. Race doesn't really exist for you because it has never been a barrier. Black folks don't have that choice.

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.

It's time we become comfortable with the uncomfortable conversations about race...Instead of being color blind, we need to be color brave.

I'm most biased about how white people have to learn to shut up when the conversation of racism comes up. White people have to learn to listen. Whether they agree with what they're hearing or not, they have to know to shut up and listen.

The ultimate solution to the race problem lies in the willingness of men to obey the unenforceable.

Finally I got to the point where I said, I'd like to start a project where we can actually talk about race and poverty, not through the lens of a particular case, but much more broadly.

The freedmen were not really free in 1865, nor are most of their descendants really free in 1965. Slavery was but one aspect of a race and color problem that is still far from solution here, or anywhere. In America particularly, the grapes of wrath have not yet yielded all their bitter vintage.

I think there's a lot of shame in American race relations. There's a lot of suppressed guilt that lashes itself out still. I see that all the time, and whereas opposed to sort of trying to address the issue in an up-front way, they're attacking and thus perpetuating the problem thinking that they're being sophisticated and post-racial, when, in fact, they're being completely regressive.

Complete independence through truth and non-violence means the independence of every unit, be it the humblest of the nation, without distinction of race, colour or creed.

God is not merely interestd in the freedom of brown men, yellow men, red men and black men.He is interested in the freedom of the whole human race.

It may never come, but I fancy than no man who has sympathy for the human race does not wish that sometime those who labor should have the whole product of their toil. Probably it will never come, but I wish that the time might come when men who work in the industries would own the industries.

What the white man in America needs to realize is there's a new thinking among black people today which makes them not willing to sit around and wait for five years to get this problem solved, much less a hundred years.

The only way not to worry about the race problem is to be doing something about it yourself. When you are, natural human vanity makes you feel that now the thing is in good hands.

Although all men are born free, slavery has been the general lot of the human race. Ignorant--they have been cheated; asleep--they have been surprised; divided--the yoke has been forced upon them. But what is the lesson...? The people ought to be enlightened, to be awakened, to be united, that after establishing a government they should watch over it.... It is universally admitted that a well-instructed people alone can be permanently free.

If life were like a competitive race, some people would be given a flying start and others would line up with weights tied to their ankles.

If you want to know where you would have stood on slavery before the Civil War, don’t look at where you stand on slavery today. Look at where you stand on animal rights.

...I cannot help being astonished at the furious and ungoverned execration which all reference to the possibility of a fusion of the races draws down upon those who suggest it, because nobody pretends to deny that, throughout the South, a large proportion of the population is the offspring of white men and colored women.

If there weren't blacks, Jews and gays, there would no Oscars. Or anyone named Oscar, if you think about that.

But George Lucas is carrying about Black actors, about Black men, about Black history, which really incorporates and tells all of history. You can't take one race out without eliminating every other race if you're going to tell the story of the human race.

As a race, the African is inferior to the white man. Subordination to the white man is his normal condition. He is not his equal by nature and cannot be made so by human laws or human institutions. Our system, therefore, so far as regards this inferior race, rests upon this great immutable law of nature.