Malcolm X
I'm for truth, no matter who tells it. I'm for justice, no matter who it's for or against.Collection: Truth
I don't even call it violence when it's in self defense; I call it intelligence.Collection: Intelligence
Power doesn't back up in the face of a smile, or in the face of a threat of some kind of nonviolent loving action. It's not the nature of power to back up in the face of anything but some more power.Collection: Smile
The future belongs to those who prepare for it today.Collection: Future
Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today.Collection: Future
Being an old farm boy myself, chickens coming home to roost never did make me sad; they've always made me glad.Collection: Sad
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.Collection: Religion
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.Collection: Attitude
In all our deeds, the proper value and respect for time determines success or failure.Collection: Time
Be peaceful, be courteous, obey the law, respect everyone; but if someone puts his hand on you, send him to the cemetery.Collection: Respect
Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you're a man, you take it.Collection: Equality
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.Collection: Equality
If you have no critics you'll likely have no success.Collection: Success
If you're not ready to die for it, put the word 'freedom' out of your vocabulary.Collection: Freedom
There is no better teacher than adversity. Every defeat, every heartbreak, every loss, contains its own seed, its own lesson on how to improve your performance the next time.Collection: Teacher
You're not supposed to be so blind with patriotism that you can't face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who says it.Collection: Patriotism
If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.Collection: Hate
We need more light about each other. Light creates understanding, understanding creates love, love creates patience, and patience creates unity.Collection: Light
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.Collection: Wisdom
One of the first things I think young people, especially nowadays, should learn is how to see for yourself and listen for yourself and think for yourself. Then you can come to an intelligent decision for yourself. If you form the habit of going by what you hear others say about someone, or going by what others think about someone, instead of searching that thing out for yourself and seeing for yourself, you will be walking west when you think you're going east, and you will be walking east when you think you're going west.Collection: Intelligent
A wise man can play the part of a clown, but a clown can't play the part of a wise man.Collection: Motivational
When 'I' replaced with 'We', even the illness becomes wellness.Collection: Community
If you stick a knife nine inches into my back and pull it out three inches, that is not progress. Even if you pull it all the way out, that is not progress. Progress is healing the wound, and America hasn't even begun to pull out the knife.Collection: Healing
When the people who are in power want to use again, create an image, to justify something that's bad, they use the press. And they'll use the press to create a humanitarian image, for a devil, or a devil image for a humanitarian. They'll take a person who's a victim of the crime, and make it appear he's the criminal, and they'll take the criminal and make it appear that he's the victim of the crime.Collection: People
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.Collection: Truth
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.Collection: Angel
In the past, yes, I have made sweeping indictments of all white people. I never will be guilty of that again - as I know now that some white people are truly sincere, that some truly are capable of being brotherly toward a black man. The true Islam has shown me that a blanket indictment of all white people is as wrong as when whites made blanket indictments against blacks.Collection: Past
I don't advocate violence; but if a man steps on my toes, I'll step on his.Collection: Men
If not now then when, if not me then who?Collection: Ifs
When you live in a poor neighborhood, you are living in an area where you have poor schools. When you have poor schools, you have poor teachers. When you have poor teachers, you get a poor education. When you get a poor education, you can only work in a poor-paying job. And that poor-paying job enables you to live again in a poor neighborhood. So, it's a very vicious cycle.Collection: Teacher
You and I have never seen democracy; all we've seen is hypocrisy.Collection: Hypocrisy
Read absolutely everything you get your hands on because you'll never know where you'll get an idea from.Collection: Hands
When you hear me say "by any means necessary," I mean exactly that. I believe in anything that is necessary to correct unjust conditions-political, economic, social, physical, anything that is necessary.Collection: Believe
One day, may we all meet together in the light of understanding.Collection: Light
They cripple the bird's wing, and then condemn it for not flying as fast as they.Collection: Wings
The only persons who really changed history are those who changed men's thinking about themselves.Collection: Men
Stumbling is not falling.Collection: Fall
It's hard for anyone intelligent to be nonviolent. Everything in the universe does something when you start playing with his life, except the American Negro. He lays down and says, 'Beat me, daddy.'Collection: Intelligent
Once he [Negro] realizes that [he is at war ], then he can defend himself.Collection: War
I asked inmate in New York, Warden Fay at that time if, if it didn't make a better inmate out of the Negroes who accepted it and he said, "Yes." So I asked him then what was it about it that he considered to be so danger, and he, dangerous, and he pointed out that it was the cohesiveness that it produced among the inmates. They stuck together.Collection: New York
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.Collection: Book
When I am dead--I say it that way because from the things I know, I do not expect to live long enough to read this book in its finished form--I want you to just watch and see if I'm not right in what I say: that the white man, in his press, is going to identify me with "hate". He will make use of me dead, as he has made use of me alive, as a convenient symbol, of "hatred"--and that will help him escape facing the truth that all I have been doing is holding up a mirror to reflect, to show, the history of unspeakable crimes that his race has committed against my race.Collection: Hate
Negroes just can't judge each other according to color, because we are all colors, all complexions.Collection: Color
Anytime you have to rely upon your enemy for a job you're in bad shape.Collection: Jobs
But they don't use law-they use law for their interests. They don't go by law, international, federal, local-nothing! They go by whatever is expedient to protect the interests that are at stake.Collection: Law
You can’t hate the roots of the tree without ending up hating the tree. You can’t hate your origin without ending up hating yourself. You can’t hate the land, your motherland, the place that you come from, and we can’t hate Africa without ending up hating ourselves. The Black man in the Western Hemisphere—North America, Central America, South America, and in the Caribbean—is the best example of how one can be made, skillfully, to hate himself that you can find anywhere on this earth.Collection: Hate
Thoughtful white people know they are inferior to black people.Collection: Thoughtful
Men who are proud of being black marry black women; women who are proud of being black marry black men.Collection: Men
America preaches integration and practices segregation.Collection: Practice
I can't turn around without hearing about some 'civil rights advance's White people seem to think the black man ought to be shouting 'hallelujah's Four hundred years the white man has had his foot-long knife in the black man's back — and now the white man starts to wiggle the knife out, maybe six inches! The black man's supposed to be grateful? Why, if the white man jerked the knife out, it's still going to leave a scar!Collection: Grateful