Malcolm X - The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965)

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All of us were mischievous at some time or another, I more so than any of the rest. [My brother] Philbert and I kept a battle going.... Even in our fighting, there was a feeling of brotherly union.

Malcolm X
Mankind's history has proved from one era to another that the true criterion of leadership is spiritual. Men are attracted by spirit. By power, men are forced. Love is engendered by spirit. By power anxieties are created.

Malcolm X
No man is given but so much time to accomplish whatever is his life's work.

Malcolm X
The junkie can never start to cure himself until he recognizes his true condition.

Malcolm X
Yes, I'm an extremist. The Black race here in North America is in extremely bad condition. You show me a Black man who isn't an extremist and I'll show you one who needs psychiatric attention.

Malcolm X
Foreign diplomats could have modeled their conduct on the way the Negro postmen, Pullman porters, and dining car waiters of Roxbury [Massachusetts] acted, striding around as if they were wearing top hats and cutaways.

Malcolm X
The American Negro has been entirely brainwashed from ever seeing or thinking of himself, as he should, as a part of the non-white peoples of the world.

Malcolm X
I don't advocate violence; but if a man steps on my toes, I'll step on his...

Malcolm X
Any time you see someone more successful than you are, they are doing something you aren't.

Malcolm X
I told the Englishman that my alma mater was books, a good library. Every time I catch a plane, I have with me a book that I want to read—and that's a lot of books these days. If I weren't out here every day battling the white man, I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity—because you can hardly mention anything I'm not curious about.

Malcolm X
I saw all races, all colors, blue eyed blonds to black skinned Africans in true brotherhood! In unity! Living as one! Worshiping as one! No segregationists, no liberals; they would not have known how to interpret the meaning of those words

Malcolm X
To tell a woman not to talk too much was like telling Jesse James not to carry a gun, or a hen not to cackle.

Malcolm X
New York white youth were killing victims; that was a 'sociological' problem. But when black youth killed somebody, the power structure was looking to hang somebody.

Malcolm X
Any number of my former brothers felt they would make heroes of themselves in the Nation of Islam if they killed me....I knew that no one would kill you quicker than Muslim if he felt that's what Allah wanted him to do.

Malcolm X
Right now, in every big city ghetto, tens of thousands of yesterday's and today's school dropouts are keeping body and soul together by some form of hustling in the same way I did.

Malcolm X
I have often reflected upon the new vistas that reading has opened to me. I knew right there in prison that reading had changed forever the course of my life. As I see it today, the ability to read awoke inside me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive.

Malcolm X
The white man was created a devil, to bring chaos upon this earth.

Malcolm X
The white man is not inherently evil, but America's racist society influences him to act evilly. The society has produced and nourishes a psychology which brings out the lowest, most base part of human beings.

Malcolm X
Every morning when I wake up, now, I regard it as having another borrowed day.

Malcolm X
I'm sorry to say that the subject I most disliked was mathematics. I have thought about it. I think the reason was that mathematics leaves no room for argument. If you made a mistake, that was all there was to it.

Malcolm X
No sane black man really wants integration! No sane white man really wants integration!

Malcolm X
They asked if I knew what 'conscientious objector' meant. I told them that when the white man asked me to go off somewhere and fight and maybe die to preserve the way the white man treated the black man in America, then my conscience made me object.

Malcolm X
The only true world solution today is governments guided by true religion — of the spirit.

Malcolm X
To me the earth's most explosive and pernicious evil is racism, the inability of God's creatures to live as One, especially in the Western world.

Malcolm X
I've had enough of someone else's propaganda. I'm for truth, no matter who tells it. I'm for justice, no matter who it's for or against. I'm a human being first and foremost, and as such I am for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.

Malcolm X
It is only after slavery and prison that the sweetest appreciation of freedom can come.

Malcolm X
It isn't the American white man who is a racist, but it's the American political, economic and social atmosphere that automatically nourishes a racist psychology in the white man.

Malcolm X
That morning was when I first began to reappraise the 'white man.' It was when I first began to perceive that 'white man,' as commonly used, means complexion only secondarily; primarily it described attitudes and actions.

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

Malcolm X
Since I learned the truth in Mecca, my dearest friends have come to include all kinds — some Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, agnostics, and even atheists! I have friends who are called capitalists, Socialists, and Communists! Some of my friends are moderates, conservatives, extremists — some are even Uncle Toms! My friends today are black, brown, red, yellow, and white!

Malcolm X