A man who stands for nothing will fall for anything.
Malcolm XRead
If you stick a knife nine inches into my back and pull it out three inches, that is not progress.
Interpretation
What this quote means
True progress requires more than just partial recovery from harm.
This quote from Malcolm X emphasizes that superficial actions or partial solutions do not equate to real progress or healing. It suggests that if a significant harm or injustice has been inflicted, attempting to address it partially only serves to highlight the extent of the original injury, rather than leading to genuine improvement or resolution.
Themes
ProgressInjusticeHealingChangeAwareness
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech addressing the need for systemic change in society.
More from Malcolm X
All quotes βI 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 XRead
When you want a nation, that's called nationalism... Black nationalism. A revolutionary is a Black nationalist. He wants a nation.
Malcolm XRead
So over you is the greatest enemy a man can have β and that is fear. I know some of you are afraid to listen to the truth β 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...
Malcolm XRead
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 XRead
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 XRead
Similar quotes
The instability of our laws is really an immense evil. I think it would be well to provide in our constitutions that there shall always be a twelve-month between the ingross-ing a bill & passing it: that it should then be offered to its passage without changing a word: and that if circum-stances should be thought to require a speedier passage, it should take two thirds of both houses instead of a bare majority.
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Each memory is like a paper flower stowed up a magician's sleeve: invisible one moment and then so substantial and florid the next I cannot imagine how it stayed hidden all this time. And like those paper flowers, once they've been let loose in the world, the memories are impossible to tuck away again.
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The teaching of the church, theoretically astute, is a lie in practice and a compound of vulgar superstitions and sorcery.
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What can you ever really know of other people's souls β of their temptations, their opportunities, their struggles? One soul in the whole of creation you do know: and it is the only one whose fate is placed in your hands. If there is a God, you are, in a sense, alone with Him.
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If the Constitution is adopted (and it was) the Union will be in fact and in theory an association of States or a Confederacy.
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