His master’s pain was his pain. And it hurt him more for his master to be sick than for him to be sick himself. When the house started burning down, that type of Negro would fight harder to put the master’s house out than the master himself would. But then you had another Negro out in the field. The house Negro was in the minority. The masses—the field Negroes were the masses. They were in the majority. When the master got sick, they prayed that he’d die. If his house caught on fire, they'd pray for a wind to come along and fan the breeze.
Malcolm XI grew up in the country on a farm it was whenever someone said even that a snake was eating the chickens or bothering the chickens, we'd kill snakes. We never knew whether that was the snake that did it.
Malcolm XThe day that the black man takes an uncompromising step and realizes that he's within his rights, when his own freedom is being jeopardized, to use any means necessary to bring about his freedom or put a halt to that injustice, I don't think he'll be by himself.
Malcolm XAny time a negro community lives under fear that its churches are going to be bombed, then they have to realize they're living in a war zone.
Malcolm XAll of the civil rights problems during the past years have created a situation where America right now is moving toward a police state. You can't have anything otherwise. So that's your supposition.
Malcolm XIt gives [a man] the incentive to develop his dormant potential so that when he becomes a part of the brotherhood of Islam, and is identified collectively in the brotherhood of Islam with the brothers in Islam, at the same time this also gives him the, it has the psychological effect of giving him the incentive as an individual to develop all of his dormant potential to its fullest extent.
Malcolm X