The greatest mistake of the movement has been trying to organize a sleeping people around specific goals. You have to wake the people up first, then you'll get action.
Malcolm XIf I may add, for instance, [Martin Luther] King and these others will say that they are fighting for the Negro to have equal job opportunity. How can people, a group of people, such as our people, who own no factories, have equal job opportunities competing against the race that owns the factories?The only way the two can have equal job opportunities is if black people have factories as, as well as white people have factories.
Malcolm XWhat the white man in America needs to realize is there's a new thinking among black people today which makes them not willing to sit around and wait for five years to get this problem solved, much less a hundred years.
Malcolm XYou're going to have a racial explosion, and a racial explosion is more dangerous than an atomic explosion. It's going to explode because black people are dissatisfied; they're dissatisfied not only with the white man, but they're dissatisfied with these Negroes who have been sitting around here posing as leaders and spokesmen for black people and actually making the problem worse instead of making the problem better.
Malcolm X