Malcolm X

A man who stands for nothing will fall for anything.

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.

When you want a nation, that's called nationalism... Black nationalism. A revolutionary is a Black nationalist. He wants a nation.

So over you is the greatest enemy a man can have — and that is fear. I know some of you are afraid to listen to the truth — you have been raised on fear and lies. But I am going to preach to you the truth until you are free of that fear...

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.

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.

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.

You show me a capitalist, and I'll show you a bloodsucker.

The black man in North America was sickest of all politically. He let the white man divide him into such foolishness as considering himself a black 'Democrat,' a black 'Republican,' a black 'Conservative,' or a black 'Liberal' ...when a ten-million black vote bloc could be the deciding balance of power in American politics, because the white man's vote is almost always evenly divided.

The mother is the first teacher of the child. The message she gives that child, that child gives to the world.

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.

It’ll be the ballot or it’ll be the bullet. It’ll be liberty or it’ll be death. And if you’re not ready to pay that price don’t use the word freedom in your vocabulary.

The same rebellion, the same impatience, the same anger that exists in the hearts of the dark people in Africa and Asia is existing in the hearts and minds of 20 million black people in this country who have been just as thoroughly colonized as the people in Africa and Asia.

If you have no critics you'll likely have no success.

I believe in human rights for everyone, and none of us is qualified to judge each other and that none of us should therefore have that authority.

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.

Anything I do today, I regard as urgent.

For 12 long years I lived within the narrow-minded confines of the 'straightjacket world' created by my strong belief that Elijah Muhammad was a messenger direct from God Himself, and my faith in what I now see to be a pseudo-religious philosophy that he preaches.... I shall never rest until I have undone the harm I did to so many well-meaning, innocent Negroes who through my own evangelistic zeal now believe in him even more fanatically and more blindly than I did.

I don't even call it violence when it's in self defense; I call it intelligence.

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.

The zionist argument to justify Israel's present occupation of Arab Palestine has no intelligent or legal basis in history.