Malcolm X
159 quotes
Biography
"In all our deeds, the proper value and respect for time determines success or failure."
"If you have no critics you'll likely have no success."
"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."
"Despite my firm convictions, I have always been a man who tries to face facts, and to accept the reality of life as new experience and new knowledge unfolds. I have always kept an open mind, a flexibility that must go hand in hand with every form of the intelligent search for truth."
"My alma mater was books, a good library.... I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity."
"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."
"Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today."
"People don't realize how a man's whole life can be changed by one book."
"You show me a capitalist, and I'll show you a bloodsucker"
"So early in my life, I had learned that if you want something, you had better make some noise."
"Truth is on the side of the oppressed."
"The ability to read awoke inside of me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive."
"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."
"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."
"لقد غيرت القراءة مجرى حياتي تغييراً جذرياً ولم أكن أهدف من ورائها الى كسب أية شهادات لتحسين مركزي وانما كنت اريد ان احيا فكريا."
"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."
"اذا كان الانسان مع الله كان الله معه وأرسل له عند الحاجة علامات تدل على ذلك."
"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."
"انني احترم حق كل انسان في ان يؤمن بما يعتقد انه الصواب، وانتظر أن أعامل بالمثل."
"إن عبادة الإله الواحد وحدها ستقرب الانسان من السلام الذي يتكلم عليه الجميع ولايفعل أحد شيئاً لتحقيقه."
"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."
"An English writer telephoned me from London, asking questions. One was, ‘What’s your alma mater?’ I told him, ‘Books."
"President Kennedy never foresaw that the chickens would come home to roost so soon. Being an old farm boy myself, chickens coming home to roost never did make me sad; they've always made me glad."
"As long as the white man sent you to Korea, you bled. He sent you to Germany, you bled. He sent you to the South Pacific to fight the Japanese, you bled. You bleed for white people, but when it comes to seeing your own churches being bombed and little black girls murdered, you haven't got any blood. You bleed when the white man says bleed; you bite when the white man says bite; and you bark when the white man says bark. I hate to say this about us, but it's true. How are you going to be nonviolent in Mississippi and Alabama, when your churches are being bombed, and your little girls are being murdered, and at the same time you are going to get violent with Hitler, and Tojo, and somebody else you don't even know?"
"If violence is wrong in America, violence is wrong abroad. If it is wrong to be violent defending black women and black children and black babies and black men, then it is wrong for America to draft us and make us violent abroad in defense of her. And if it is right for America to draft us, and teach us how to be violent in defense of her, then it is right for you and me to do whatever is necessary to defend our own people right here in this country."