Quotes by Malcolm X

History is a peoples memory, and without a memory, a man is demoted to the lower animals.

Right now, in every big city ghetto, tens of thousands of yesterdays and todays school dropouts are keeping body and soul together by some form of hustling in the same way I did.

Its like the Negro in America seeing the white man win all the time.Hes 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.

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.

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 theres no question of integration or intermarriage. Its just one human being marrying another human being or one human being living around and with another human being.

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.

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.

If someone puts their hands on you make sure they never put their hands on anybody else again.

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.

All of us - who might have probed space, or cured cancer, or built industries - were, instead, black victims of the white mans American social system.

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.

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 youre both engaged in the same business - you know theyre doing something that you arent.

One day, may we all meet together in the light of understanding.

Why am I as I am? To understand that of any person, his whole life, fromBirth must be reviewed. All of our experiences fuse into our personality. Everything that ever happened to us is an ingredient.

Usually when people are sad, they dont do anything. They just cry over their condition. But when they get angry, they bring about a change.

I have more respect for a man who lets me know where he stands, even if hes wrong. Than the one who comes up like an angel and is nothing but a devil.

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...

Even Samson, the worlds strongest man, was destroyed by the woman who slept in his arms. she was the one whose words hurt him.

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.

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 youve got to be born into a society where you still have that same fight. What did we do, who preceded you? Ill tell you what we did. Nothing. And dont you make the same mistake we made....