Malcolm X Quotes on Human Rights

Sicebise Msengana

1. "Well, I am one who doesn't believe in deluding myself. I'm not going to sit at your table and watch you eat, with nothing on my plate, and call myself a diner. Sitting at the table doesn't make you a diner, unless you eat some of what's on that plate. Being here in America doesn't make you an American. Being born here in America doesn't make you an American. Why, if birth made you American, you wouldn't need any legislation, you wouldn't need any amendments to the Constitution, you wouldn't be faced with civil-rights filibustering in Washington, D.C., right now. They don't have to pass civil-rights legislation to make a Polack an American."



2. "So, where do we go from here? First, we need some friends. We need some new allies. The entire civil-rights struggle needs a new interpretation, a broader interpretation. We need to look at this civil-rights thing from another angle from the inside as well as from the outside. To those of us whose philosophy is black nationalism, the only way you can get involved in the civil-rights struggle is give it a new interpretation. That old interpretation excluded us. It kept us out. So, we're giving a new interpretation to the civil-rights struggle, an interpretation that will enable us to come into it, take part in it. And these handkerchief-heads who have been dillydallying and pussy footing and compromising - we don't intend to let them pussyfoot and dillydally and compromise any longer."


3. "Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you're a man, you take it."


5. "The real names of our people were destroyed during slavery. The last name of my forefathers was taken from them when they were brought to America and made slaves, and then the name of the slave master was given, which we refuse, we reject that name today and refuse it. I never acknowledge it whatsoever."


6. "I am for violence if non-violence means we continue postponing a solution to the American black man's problem just to avoid violence."


7. "Segregation is that which is forced upon an inferior by a superior. Separation is done voluntarily by two equals."

8. "You can't separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom."

9. "You don't have to be a man to fight for freedom. All you have to do is to be an intelligent human being."

10. "I believe in the brotherhood of man, all men, but I don't believe in brotherhood with anybody who doesn't want brotherhood with me. I believe in treating people right, but I'm not going to waste my time trying to treat somebody right who doesn't know how to return the treatment."