Malcolm X - The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965)

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In all our deeds, the proper value and respect for time determines success or failure.

Malcolm X
The Negro's so-called 'revolt' is merely an asking to be accepted into the existing system!

Malcolm X
I remember one thing that marred this time for me; the movie "Gone with the Wind." When it played in Mason [MI], I was the only Negro in the theater, and when Butterfly McQueen went into her act, I felt like crawling under the rug.

Malcolm X
As bad as I was, as much trouble and worry as I caused my mother, I loved her.

Malcolm X
A Negro just can't be whipped by somebody white and return with his head up in the neighborhood, especially in those days, when sports and, to a lesser extent show business, were the only fields open to Negroes, and when the ring was the only place a Negro could whip a white man and not be lynched.

Malcolm X
It is only after the deepest darkness that the greatest light can come; it is only after extreme grief that the greatest joy can come...

Malcolm X
Thicker each year in these ghettoes is the kind of teen-ager that I was—with the wrong kinds of heroes, and the wrong kinds of influences.

Malcolm X
I have rarely talked to anyone about my mother, for I believe that I am capable of killing a person, without hesitation, who happened to make the wrong kind of remark about my mother. So I purposely don't make any opening for some fool to step into.

Malcolm X
If Christianity had asserted itself in Germany, six million Jews would have lived.

Malcolm X
Here was one of the white man's most characteristic behavior patterns - where black men are concerned. He loves himself so much that he is startled if he discovers that his victims don't share his vainglorious self-opinion.

Malcolm X
You trust them (white Americans), and I don't. You studied what he wanted you to learn about him in schools. I studied him in the streets and in prison, where you see the truth.

Malcolm X
Allah always gives you signs, when you are with Him, that He is with you.

Malcolm X
Hence I have no mercy or compassion in me for a society that will crush people, and then penalize them for not being able to stand up under the weight.

Malcolm X
America's most dangerous and threatening black man is the one who has been kept sealed up by the Northerner in the black ghettos - the Northern white power structure's system to keep talking democracy while keeping the black man out of sight somewhere, around the corner.

Malcolm X
The next day I was in my car driving along the freeway when at a red light another car pulled alongside. A white woman was driving and on the passenger's side, next to me, was a white man. "Malcolm X!" he called out-and when I looked, he stuck his hand out of his car, across at me, grinning. "Do you mind shaking hands with a white man?" Imagine that! Just as the traffic light turned green, I told him, "I don't mind shaking hands with human beings. Are you one?"

Malcolm X
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.

Malcolm X
Where the really sincere white people have got to do their 'proving' of themselves is not among the black victims, but out on the battle lines of where America's racism really is - and that's in their own home communities.

Malcolm X
I don't care how nice one is to you, the thing you must always remember is that almost never does he really see you as he sees himself, as he sees his own kind.

Malcolm X
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.

Malcolm X
In fact, once he is motivated no one can change more completely than the man who has been at the bottom. I call myself the best example of that.

Malcolm X
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.

Malcolm X
I am for violence if non-violence means we continue postponing a solution to the American black man's problem just to avoid violence.

Malcolm X
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.

Malcolm X
I believe it's a crime for anyone who is being brutalized to continue to accept that brutality without doing something to defend himself.

Malcolm X
The young whites, and blacks, too, are the only hope that America has, the rest of us have always been living in a lie.

Malcolm X