123 Quotes & Sayings By Malcolm X

Malcolm X (born Malcolm Little; May 19, 1925 – February 21, 1965) was an African-American Muslim minister and human rights activist. His 1964 autobiography, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, is one of the most influential texts of the 20th century. It has been called the greatest single work of nonfiction by a black author in American history. He was assassinated in 1965.

People don't realize how a man's whole life can be...
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People don't realize how a man's whole life can be changed by one book. Malcolm X
So early in my life, I had learned that if...
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So early in my life, I had learned that if you want something, you had better make some noise. Malcolm X
You're not to be so blind with patriotism that you...
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You're not to be so blind with patriotism that you can't face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or says it. Malcolm X
You show me a capitalist, and I'll show you a...
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You show me a capitalist, and I'll show you a bloodsucker Malcolm X
The only way we'll get freedom for ourselves is to...
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The only way we'll get freedom for ourselves is to identify ourselves with every oppressed people in the world. We are blood brothers to the people of Brazil, Venezuela, Haiti, Cuba -- yes Cuba too. Malcolm X
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I'm for truth, no matter who tells it. I'm for justice, no matter who it is for or against. I'm a human being, first and foremost, and as such I'm for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole. Malcolm X
Truth is on the side of the oppressed.
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Truth is on the side of the oppressed. Malcolm X
The greatest mistake of the movement has been trying to...
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The greatest mistake of the movement has been trying to organize a sleeping people around specific goals. You have to wake the people up first, then you'll get action. Malcolm X
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Despite my firm convictions, I have been always a man who tries to face facts, and to accept the reality of life as new experience and new knowledge unfolds it. I have always kept an open mind, which is necessary to the flexibility that must go hand in hand with every form of intelligent search for truth. Malcolm X
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I’ve had enough of someone else’s propaganda… I’m for truth, no matter who tells it. I’m for justice, no matter who it is for or against. I’m a human being first and foremost, and as such I’m for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole. Malcolm X
Time is on the side of the oppressed today, it's...
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Time is on the side of the oppressed today, it's against the oppressor. Truth is on the side of the oppressed today, it's against the oppressor. You don't need anything else. Malcolm X
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It has hindered where it might have helped; it has been evasive when it was morally bound to be forthright; it has separated believers on the basis of color, although it has declared its mission to be a universal brotherhood under Jesus Christ. Christian love is the white man's love for himself and for his race. Malcolm X
Don't be in a hurry to condemn because he doesn't...
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Don't be in a hurry to condemn because he doesn't do what you do or think as you think or as fast. There was a time when you didn't know what you know today. Malcolm X
Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs...
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Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today. Malcolm X
I imagine that one of the biggest troubles with colleges...
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I imagine that one of the biggest troubles with colleges is there are too many distractions, too much panty-raiding, fraternities, and boola-boola and all of that. Malcolm X
An English writer telephoned me from London, asking questions. One...
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An English writer telephoned me from London, asking questions. One was, ‘What’s your alma mater?’ I told him, ‘Books. Malcolm X
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This was my first lesson about gambling: if you see somebody winning all the time, he isn't gambling, he's cheating. Later on in life, if I were continuously losing in any gambling situation, I would watch very closely. Malcolm X
My alma mater was books, a good library.... I could...
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My alma mater was books, a good library.... I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity. Malcolm X
The ability to read awoke inside of me some long...
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The ability to read awoke inside of me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive. Malcolm X
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Children have a lesson adults should learn, to not be ashamed of failing, but to get up and try again. Most of us adults are so afraid, so cautious, so 'safe, ' and therefore so shrinking and rigid and afraid that it is why so many humans fail. Most middle-aged adults have resigned themselves to failure. Malcolm X
Sometimes you have to pick the gun up to put...
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Sometimes you have to pick the gun up to put the Gun down. Malcolm X
We cannot think of being acceptable to others until we...
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We cannot think of being acceptable to others until we have first proven acceptable to ourselves. Malcolm X
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I believe that there will be ultimately be a clash between the oppressed and those who do the oppressing. I believe that there will be a clash between those who want freedom, justice and equality for everyone and those who want to continue the system of exploitation. I believe that there will be that kind of clash, but I don't think it will be based on the color of the skin... Malcolm X
... the young people are the ones who most quickly...
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... the young people are the ones who most quickly identify with the struggle and the necessity to eliminate the evil conditions that exist. Malcolm X
You are either free or not free
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You are either free or not free Malcolm X
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Laura never again came to the drugstore as long as I continued to work there. The next time I saw her, she was a wreck of a woman, notorious around black Roxbury, in and out of jail. She had finished high school, but by then she was already going the wrong way. Defying her grandmother, she had started going out late and drinking liquor. This led to dope, and that to selling herself to men. Learning to hate the men who bought her, she also became a Lesbian. One of the shames I have carried for years is that I blame myself for all of this. To have treated her as I did for a white woman made the blow doubly heavy. The only excuse I can offer is that like so many of my black brothers today, I was just deaf, dumb, and blind. Malcolm X
Never ask a woman about other men. Either she'll tell...
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Never ask a woman about other men. Either she'll tell you a lie, and you still won't know, or if she tells you the truth, you might not have wanted to hear it in the first place. Malcolm X
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The greatest miracle Christianity has achieved in America is that the black man in white Christian hands has not grown violent. It is a miracle that 22 million black people have not risen up against their oppressors — in which they would have been justified by all moral criteria, and even by the democratic tradition! It is a miracle that a nation of black people has so fervently continued to believe in a turn-the-other-cheek and heaven-for-you-after-you-die philosophy! It is a miracle that the American black people have remained a peaceful people, while catching all the centuries of hell that they have caught, here in white man’s heaven! The miracle is that the white man’s puppet Negro ‘leaders’, his preachers and the educated Negroes laden with degrees, and others who have been allowed to wax fat off their black poor brothers, have been able to hold the black masses quiet until now. Malcolm X
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He said, one time, that no true leader burdened his followers with a greater load than they could carry, and no true leader sets too fast a pace for his follows to keep up. Malcolm X
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I have often reflected upon the new vistas that reading has opened to me. I knew right there in prison that reading had changed forever the course of my life. As I see it today, the ability to read awoke inside me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive. Malcolm X
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History is a people's memory, and without a memory, a man is demoted to the lower animals. Malcolm X
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Right now, in every big city ghetto, tens of thousands of yesterday's and today's school dropouts are keeping body and soul together by some form of hustling in the same way I did. Malcolm X
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It's like the Negro in America seeing the white man win all the time. He's a professional gambler; he has all the cards and the odds stacked on his side, and he has always dealt to our people from the bottom of the deck. Malcolm X
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When Pope Pius XII died, LIFE magazine carried a picture of him in his private study kneeling before a black Christ. What was the source of their information? All white people who have studied history and geography know that Christ was a black man. Only the poor, brainwashed American Negro has been made to believe that Christ was white, to maneuver him into worshiping the white man. After becoming a Muslim in prison, I read almost everything I could put my hands on in the prison library. I began to think back on everything I had read and especially with the histories, I realized that nearly all of them read by the general public have been made into white histories. I found out that the history-whitening process either had left out great things that black men had done, or some of the great black men had gotten whitened. Malcolm X
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I believe in recognizing every human being as a human being--neither white, black, brown, or red; and when you are dealing with humanity as a family there's no question of integration or intermarriage. It's just one human being marrying another human being or one human being living around and with another human being. Malcolm X
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I remember one night at Muzdalifa with nothing but the sky overhead I lay awake amid sleeping Muslim brothers and I learned that pilgrims from every land--every color, and class, and rank; high officials and the beggar alike--all snored in the same language. Malcolm X
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But let’s not forget the Jew. Anybody that gives even a just criticism of the Jew is instantly labeled anti- Semite. The Jew cries louder than anybody else if anybody criticizes him. You can tell the truth about any minority in America, but make a true observation about the Jew, and if it doesn’t 't pat him on the back, then he uses his grip on the news media to label you anti- Semite. Malcolm X
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If someone puts their hands on you make sure they never put their hands on anybody else again. Malcolm X
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Many people in this country who want to see us the minority, and who don’t want to see us taking too militant or too uncompromising a stand, are absolutely against the successful regrouping or organising of any faction in this country whose thought and whose thinking pattern is international rather than national… There’s a world wide revolution going on, it goes beyond Mississippi, it goes beyond Alabama, it goes beyond Harlem. What is it revolting against? The power structure. The American power structure? No. The French power structure? No. The English power structure? No. Then, what power structure? An international Western power structure. Malcolm X
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All of us - who might have probed space, or cured cancer, or built industries - were, instead, black victims of the white man's American social system. Malcolm X
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The world since Adam has been white–and corrupt. The world of tomorrow will be black–and righteous. In the white world there has been nothing but slavery, suffering, death and colonialism. In the black world of tomorrow, there will be true freedom, justice and equality for all. And that day is coming–sooner than you think. Malcolm X
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All I had done was to improve on their strategy, and it was the beginning of a very important lesson in life - that anytime you find someone more successful than you are, especially when you're both engaged in the same business - you know they're doing something that you aren't. Malcolm X
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One day, may we all meet together in the light of understanding. Malcolm X
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Why am I as I am? To understand that of any person, his whole life, from Birth must be reviewed. All of our experiences fuse into our personality. Everything that ever happened to us is an ingredient. Malcolm X
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Usually when people are sad, they don't do anything. They just cry over their condition. But when they get angry, they bring about a change. Malcolm X
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I have more respect for a man who lets me know where he stands, even if he's wrong. Than the one who comes up like an angel and is nothing but a devil. Malcolm X
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To the same degree that your understanding of and attitude towards Afrika becomes more positive, your understanding of and attitude towards yourself will also becomes more positive... Malcolm X
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Even Samson, the world's strongest man, was destroyed by the woman who slept in his arms. she was the one whose words hurt him. Malcolm X
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Always, every now and then, I had given her a hard time, just to keep her in line. Every once in a while a woman seems to need, in fact wants this too. Malcolm X
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Look at yourselves. Some of you teenagers, students. How do you think I feel and I belong to a generation ahead of you - how do you think I feel to have to tell you, 'We, my generation, sat around like a knot on a wall while the whole world was fighting for its human rights - and you've got to be born into a society where you still have that same fight.' What did we do, who preceded you? I'll tell you what we did. Nothing. And don't you make the same mistake we made.. Malcolm X
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Be peaceful, be courteous, obey the law, respect everyone; but if someone puts his hand on you, send him to the cemetery. Malcolm X
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I am a Muslim, because it's a religion that teaches you an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. It teaches you to respect everybody, and treat everybody right. But it also teaches you if someone steps on your toe, chop off their foot. And I carry my religious axe with me all the time. Malcolm X
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True Islam taught me that it takes all of the religious, political, economic, psychological, and racial ingredients, or characteristics, to make the Human Family and the Human Society complete. Malcolm X
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There is nothing in our book, the Qur'an, that teaches us to suffer peacefully. Our religion teaches us to be intelligent. Be peaceful, be courteous, obey the law, respect everyone; but if someone lays a hand on you, send him to the cemetery. Malcolm X
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America needs to understand Islam, because this is the one religion that erases from its society the race problem. Throughout my travels in the Muslim world, I have met, talked to, and even eaten with people who in America would have been considered white, but the white attitude was removed from their minds by the religion of Islam. I have never before seen sincere and true brotherhood practiced by all together, irrespective of their color. Malcolm X
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I want to say before I go on that I have never previously told anyone my sordid past in detail. I haven't done it now to sound as though I might be proud of how bad, how evil, I was. But people are always speculating-why am I as I am? To understand that of any person, his whole life, from birth, must be reviewed. All of our experiences fuse into our personality. Everything that ever happened to us is an ingredient. Today, when everything that I do has an urgency, I would not spend one hour in the preparation of a book which had the ambition to perhaps titillate some readers. But I am spending many hoursbecause the full story is the best way that I know to have it seen, and understood, that I had sunk to the very bottom of the American white man's society when-soon now, in prison- I found Allah and the religion of Islam and it completely transformed my life. . Malcolm X
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When the meat platter was passed to me, I didn't even know what the meat was; usually, you couldn't tell, anyway-but it was suddenly as though _don't eat any more pork_ flashed on a screen before me. I hesitated, with the platter in mid-air; then I passed it along to the inmate waiting next to me. He began serving himself; abruptly, he stopped. I remember him turning, looking surprised at me. I said to him, "I don't eat pork." The platter then kept on down the table. It was the funniest thing, the reaction, and the way that it spread. In prison, where so little breaks the monotonous routine, the smallest thing causes a commotion of talk. It was being mentioned all over the cell block by night that Satan didn't eat pork. Malcolm X
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And when I speak, I don't speak as a Democrat. Or a Republican. Nor an American. I speak as a victim of America's so-called democracy. You and I have never seen democracy - all we've seen is hypocrisy. When we open our eyes today and look around America, we see America not through the eyes of someone who has enjoyed the fruits of Americanism. We see America through the eyes of someone who has been the victim of Americanism. We don't see any American dream. We've experienced only the American nightmare. Malcolm X
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To have once been a criminal is no disgrace. To remain a criminal is the disgrace Malcolm X
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A man with a rifle or a club can only be stopped by a person who defends himself with a rifle or a club. That's equality. If the United States government doesn't want you and me to have rifles, then take the rifles away from those racists. If they don't want you and me to use clubs, take the clubs away from the racists. If they don't want you and me to get violent, then stop the racists from being violent. Don't teach us non-violence! ! ! . Malcolm X
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You can't hate the roots of a tree and not hate the tree. Malcolm X
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Concerning non-violence: it is criminal to teach a man not to defend himself when he is the constant victim of brutal attacks. Malcolm X
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You can't have capitalism without racism. Malcolm X
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Thoughtful white people know they are inferior to black people. Anyone who has studied the genetic phase of biology knows that white is considered recessive and black is considered dominant. When you want strong coffee, you ask for black coffee. If you want it light, you want it weak, integrated with white milk. Just like these Negroes who weaken themselves and their race by this integrating and intermixing with whites. If you want bread with no nutritional value, you ask for white bread. All the good that was in it has been bleached out of it, and it will constipate you. If you want pure flour, you ask for dark flour, whole-wheat flour. If you want pure sugar, you want dark sugar. Malcolm X
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A man who tosses worms in the river isn’t 't necessarily a friend of the fish. All the fish who take him for a friend, who think the worm’s got no hook in it, usually end up in the frying pan. Malcolm X
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No, there is plenty wrong with Negroes. They have no society. They’re robots, automatons. No minds of their own. I hate to say that about us, but it’s the truth. They are a black body with a white brain. Malcolm X
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America's racism is among their own fellow whites. That's where sincere whites who really mean to accomplish something have got to work. Malcolm X
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I have often reflected upon the new vistas that reading opened to me. I knew right there, in prison, that reading had changed forever the course of my life. As I see it today, the ability to read awoke inside me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive. I certainly wasn’t seeking any degree, the way a college confers a status symbol upon its students. My home made education gave me, with every additional book that I read, a little bit more sensitivity to the deafness, dumbness, and blindness that was afflicting the black race in America. Not long ago, an English writer telephoned me from London asking questions. One was, “What’s your alma mater?” I told him, “Books.” You will never catch me with a free fifteen minutes in which I’m not studying something I feel might be able to help the black man. . Malcolm X
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The Algerians were revolutionsists, they wanted land. France offered to let them be integrated into France. They told France, to hell with Fance, they wanted some land, not some France. Malcolm X
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Eventually my mother suffered a complete breakdown, and the court orders were finally signed. They took her to the State Mental Hospital at Kalamazoo. My mother remained in the same hospital at Kalamazoo for about 26 years. My last visit, when I knew I would never come to see her again-there-was in 1952. I was twenty-seven. My brother Philbert had told me that on his last visit, she had recognized him somewhat. "In spots" he said. But she didn't recognize me at all. She stared at me. She didn't know who I was. Her mind, when I tried to talk, to reach her, was somewhere else. I asked, "Mama, do you know what day it is?" She said, staring, "All the people have gone." I can't describe how I felt. The woman who had brought me into the world, and nursed me, and advised me, and chastised me, and loved me, didn't know me. It was as if I was trying to walk up the side of a hill of feathers."- Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X . Malcolm X
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No matter how much respect, no matter how much recognition whites show towards me…as long as that same respect and recognition isn’t shown towards everyone of our people in this country—it doesn’t exist for me. Malcolm X
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To me, the thing that is worse than death is betrayal. You see, I could conceive death, but I could not conceive betrayal. Malcolm X
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I don't know how many marriage breakups are caused by these movie-and television-addicted women expecting some bouquets and kissing and hugging and being swept out like Cinderella for dinner and dancing -- then getting mad when a poor, scraggly husband comes in tired and sweaty from working like a dog all day, looking for some food. Malcolm X
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The old men had a set rabbit-hunting strategy that they had always used. Usually when a dog jumps a rabbit, and the rabbit gets away, that rabbit will always somehow instinctively run in a circle and return sooner or later past the very spot where he originally was jumped. Well, the old men would just sit and wait in hiding somewhere for the rabbit to come back, then get their shots at him. I got to thinking about it, and finally I thought of a plan. I would separate from them and Big Boy and I would go to a point where I figured that the rabbit, returning, would have to pass me first. It worked like magic. I began to get three and four rabbits before they got one. The astonishing thing was that none of the old men ever figured out why. They outdid themselves exclaiming what a sure shot I was. I was about twelve, then. All I had done was to improve on their strategy, and it was the beginning of a very important lesson in life–that anytime you find someone more successful than you are, especially when you’re both engaged in the same business–you know they’re doing something that you aren’t. Malcolm X
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I say, sir, that you can never make an intelligent judgment without evidence. Malcolm X
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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. Malcolm X
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It's just like when you've got some coffee that's too black, which means it's too strong. What do you do? You integrate it with cream, you make it weak. But if you pour too much cream in it, you won't even know you ever had coffee. It used to be hot, it becomes cool. It used to be strong, it becomes weak. It used to wake you up, now it puts you to sleep. Malcolm X
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I'm sorry to say that the subject I most disliked was mathematics. I have thought about it. I think the reason was that mathematics leaves no room for argument. If you made a mistake, that was all there was to it. Malcolm X
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Betty's a good Muslim woman and wife. I don't imagine many other women might put up with the way I am. Awakening this brainwashed black man and telling this arrogant, devilish white man the truth about himself, Betty understands, is a full-time job Malcolm X
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How is it possible to write one's autobiography in a world so fast-changing as this? Malcolm X
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Power never takes a back step - only in the face of more power. Malcolm X
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We declare our right on this earth...to be a human being, to be respected as a human being, to be given the rights of a human being in this society, on this earth, in this day, which we intend to bring into existence by any means necessary. Malcolm X
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I for one believe that if you give people a thorough understanding of what confronts them and the basic causes that produce it, they'll create their own program, and when the people create a program, you get action. Malcolm X
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I learned early that crying out in protest could accomplish things. My older brothers and sister had started to school when, sometimes, they would come in and ask for a buttered biscuit or something and my mother, impatiently, would tell them no. But I would cry out and make a fuss until I got what I wanted. I remember well how my mother asked me why I couldn't be a nice boy like Wilfred; but I would think to myself that Wilfred, for being so nice and quiet, often stayed hungry. So early in life, I had learned that if you want something, you had better make some noise. Malcolm X
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I'm for truth, no matter who tells it. I'm for justice, no matter who is for or against it. Malcolm X
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Nobody can give you freedom, nobody can give you equality or justice. If you are a man, you take it. Malcolm X
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America needs to understand Islam, because this is the one religion that erases from its society the race problem. Throughout my travels in the Muslim world, I have met, talked to, even eaten with people who in America would have been considered 'white, ' but the 'white' attitude had been removed from their minds by the religion of Islam. Malcolm X
88
I have more respect for a man who lets me know where he stands, even if he's wrong, than the one who comes up like an angel and is nothing but a devil. Malcolm X
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In all our deeds, the proper value and respect for time determines success or failure. Malcolm X
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If ballots won't work, bullets will. Malcolm X
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Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you're a man, you take it. Malcolm X
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If you have a dog, I must have a dog. If you have a rifle, I must have a rifle. If you have a club, I must have a club. This is equality. Malcolm X
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I don't even call it violence when it's in self defense I call it intelligence. Malcolm X
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I believe in a religion that believes in freedom. Any time I have to accept a religion that won't let me fight a battle for my people, I say to hell with that religion. Malcolm X
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There is nothing in our book, the Koran, that teaches us to suffer peacefully. Our religion teaches us to be intelligent. Malcolm X
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There is no better than adversity. Every defeat, every heartbreak, every loss, contains its own seed, its own lesson on how to improve your performance the next time. Malcolm X
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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. Malcolm X
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History proves that the white man is a devil. Malcolm X
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History is a people's memory, and without a memory, man is demoted to the lower animals. Malcolm X
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The media's the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that's power. Because they control the minds of the masses. Malcolm X