He said it in “Prospects for Freedom in 1965,” delivered at the Socialist Workers Party’s Militant Labor Forum in New York City on 7 January 1965 — his third appearance at that forum. Published transcripts read “Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or who says it”; the version that circulates online quietly drops the second “who.”
“You're not supposed to be so blind with patriotism that you can't face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or who says it.” Malcolm X, "Prospects for Freedom in 1965," speech at the Militant Labor Forum, New York City, 7 January 1965. Verified via Quotle.info
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Evoking the world of Malcolm X — American Black nationalist leader and human-rights activist. Theme: "Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or says it". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
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Provenance
The source
Speech
Prospects for Freedom in 1965
Delivered
7 January 1965 — Militant Labor Forum, New York City
Usually cited to
Malcolm X Speaks, ed. George Breitman (1965)
Popular wording
Clipped — transcripts read “or who says it”
That’s wrong. Now, you’re not supposed to be so blind with patriotism that you can’t face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or who says it.
Militant Labor Forum, 7 January 1965
The sentence closes a passage on what the United States “did in the Congo in 1964” and was doing in South Vietnam. It is an argument about foreign policy and patriotism, not a free-floating maxim.
The passage survives in a published transcript headnoted to the Socialist Workers Party’s Militant Labor Forum in New York City, 7 January 1965: “That’s wrong. Now, you’re not supposed to be so blind with patriotism that you can’t face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or who says it” — Workers’ Voice ↗.
Two further independent transcripts carry the identical wording in the identical paragraph about the Congo and South Vietnam — ICIT Digital Library ↗ and AClasses ↗, the latter opening with his own words: “It is an honor to me to come back to the Militant Labor Forum again this evening. It’s my third time here.”
Of the aggregators we checked, only WIST ↗ attaches a real citation, naming the speech, the date of 7 January 1965, New York, and the collection Malcolm X Speaks.
The speech was delivered on 7 January 1965 and published that same year — decades after the 1931 cut-off for the United States public domain — so both the address and the collected text remain in copyright. Malcolm X Speaks is in print from two houses, Pathfinder Press and Grove Press, so approach whichever published the edition you are quoting. Short quotation for identification and comment, as here, is a different matter from reproducing the speech; for anything longer, clear it with the rights holders.
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
Fact-check
What gets it wrong
Nobody is putting these words in the wrong mouth — Malcolm X really said them. What travels badly is the wording and the source. Both of the biggest quote sites carrying this line get one or the other wrong.
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WordingThe clipped internet version altered
Published transcripts read “Now, you’re not supposed to be so blind with patriotism that you can’t face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or who says it.” The circulating form contracts the first clause to “you’re not to be” and drops the second “who” — compare the transcript ↗.
The Quotations Page carries it ↗ with nothing but “US black nationalist leader (1925-1965)” attached — no speech, no venue, no year. That is how a real sentence starts to look like a fabricated one.
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Reference worksWikiquote absent
The line does not appear on English Wikiquote’s Malcolm X page ↗ in any section — sourced, disputed or misattributed. Its absence there is not evidence against the quote; it simply means the speech transcript has to do the work. Simple English Wikiquote ↗ does list the clipped wording, but only under “Attributed quotes” and with no citation — one more copy travelling without a source.
✓He said it on 7 January 1965, at the Militant Labor Forum in New York, in a paragraph about the Congo and South Vietnam — read the whole speech ↗.
Context
Why it mattered
This is not a greeting-card maxim, and it was never meant to be portable. The sentence lands at the end of a blunt passage about United States conduct abroad — what America “did in the Congo in 1964,” which Malcolm X calls “criminal,” and the war in South Vietnam, where he says American soldiers were dying “for no reason at all.” The point of “wrong is wrong” is the clause that sets it up: you’re not supposed to be so blind with patriotism that you can’t face reality.
He was speaking to the Socialist Workers Party’s Militant Labor Forum in New York, an audience he had addressed twice before. He opened by joking that the press would report the evening as though it had taken place “in Peking or someplace else” — a man well aware that being right about American foreign policy in January 1965 was not going to be reported as patriotism. He was killed six weeks later.
Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or who says it.
How one word went missing
The clipped form almost certainly spread by transcription drift on quote-aggregator sites rather than by any deliberate rewrite: “you’re not supposed to be” contracts to “you’re not to be,” and the repeated “who” in “who does it or who says it” reads as redundant on the page even though it is emphatic in speech.
The meaning survives intact, which is why this page rates the quote verified rather than disputed — but if you are quoting him in print, quote the transcript.
Explore
Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
1925–1965 · American Black nationalist leader and human-rights activist
Born Malcolm Little in Omaha, Nebraska in 1925, he became the Nation of Islam’s most forceful national spokesman before leaving the group, embracing Sunni Islam, and founding his own organizations. In the last year of his life he recast the Black freedom struggle in the United States as an international human-rights question, and spoke repeatedly to the Socialist Workers Party’s Militant Labor Forum in New York — this speech was his third such appearance. He was assassinated in Manhattan on 21 February 1965, just over six weeks after delivering it.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Cite this
Malcolm X, “Prospects for Freedom in 1965” (speech, Militant Labor Forum, New York City, January 7, 1965); the address is cited to Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements, ed. George Breitman (New York: Merit Publishers, 1965).
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or says it’?” Last verified 4 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/wrong-is-wrong-no-matter-who-does-it-or-says-it/