When someone sticks a knife six inches into your back, and then pulls it out two inches and claims he's doing you a favor, don't believe him.
Malcolm XI 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 XThere has to be something wrong when a man or a woman leaves his own people and marries somebody of another kind.
Malcolm XA cat that's inside of your house that is angry and dissatisfied and hostile is more dangerous to you than a full-grown lion is on the outside.
Malcolm XOn the Iberian Peninsula in the Spanish-Portuguese area, southern France that high state of a culture existed there because of Africans known as Moors had come there and brought it there.
Malcolm XPower in defense of freedom is greater than power in behalf of tyranny and oppression, because power, real power, comes from our conviction which produces action, uncompromising action.
Malcolm XI had one warden tell me since I've been out, and I visited an inmate in prison right here in New York, Warden Fay up at Green Haven. I visited an inmate in prison and he told me that he didn't want anybody in there trying to spread this religion.
Malcolm XBrothers and sisters, friends and enemies: I just can't believe everyone in here is a friend, and I don't want to leave anybody out.
Malcolm XWe would do the same thing that America did when the Jap[an] - when, when Pearl Harbor was attacked. America defended itself. They said praise the Lord, but they passed the ammunition.
Malcolm XThe mother is the first teacher of the child. The message she gives that child, that child gives to the world.
Malcolm XMy contention is that if you trace it back, it was the people of the East who brought them out of the Dark Ages, who brought about the period, or ushered in or initiated the atmosphere that brought into Europe the period known as the Renaissance.
Malcolm XThe Honorable Elijah Muhammad is teaching the black man, you're a human man.All you have to do is dignify yourself. You don't have to wait for any white man to recognize you. Recognize yourself. Love each other. Practice harmony and brotherhood among your own kind.
Malcolm XThe same as in a German neighborhood, the stores are run by Germans, and in a Chinese neighborhood they're run by Chinese. In the negro neighborhood the businesses should be owned and operated by Negroes and, thereby, they would be creating employment for Negroes.
Malcolm XMost of the negro leaders who get the support of the power structure end up being against [Reverend] Galamison.
Malcolm XI am not an American; I am one of twenty-two million black people who are victims of Americanism.
Malcolm XTo 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 XAny form of integration, forced integration, any - any - any effort to force integration upon whites is actually hypocritical.
Malcolm XAs long as Negro leader is making the white man think that our people are satisfied to sit in his house and wait for him to correct these conditions, he is - he is misrepresenting the thinking of the black masses, and he's doing the white man a disservice because he's making the white man be more complacent than he would be if he knew the dangerous situation that is building up right inside his own house.
Malcolm XWe must establish all over the country schools of our own to train our own children to become scientists, to become mathematicians. We must realize the need for adult education and for job retraining programs that will emphasize a changing society in which automation plays the key role. We intend to use the tools of education to help raise our people to an unprecedented level of excellence and self respect through their own efforts.
Malcolm XI am a Muslim, because it's a religion that teaches you an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. It teaches you to respect everybody, and treat everybody right. But it also teaches you if someone steps on your toe, chop off their foot. And I carry my religious axe with me all the time.
Malcolm X[People] earn extra money [in prison] selling contraband, dope, and things of that sort to the inmates, and so that really it's an exploiter.
Malcolm XI feel like a man who has been asleep somewhat and under someone else's control. I feel that what I'm thinking and saying is now for myself. Before it was for and by the guidance of Elijah Muhammad. Now I think with my own mind, sir!
Malcolm XI looked on the television the other night and saw them beating a Negro unmercifully in Mississippi. And this is the result of a brainwashing technique, a certain power structure in the American government has paid these Negro integrationist leaders to perpetuate among our people. But it's not a good thing, and it will never solve our problem.
Malcolm XBetter jobs and housing are only temporary solutions. They are aspects of tokenism and don't go to the heart of the problem.
Malcolm XAny negro who occupies a position that was given to him by the white man, if you analyze his function, his function never enables him to really take a firm, uncompromising, militant stand on problems that confront our people.
Malcolm XI, for one, will join in with anyone -- I don't care what color you are -- as long as you want to change this miserable condition that exists on this earth.
Malcolm XI was going through the hardest thing, also the greatest thing, for any human being to do; to accept that which is already within you, and around you.
Malcolm XBecause the average negro organization, especially, can't see the problem in its entirety. They can't even see that the problem is so big that their own organization as such, by itself, can never come to a, can never come up with a solution.
Malcolm XAnytime there's a fire in a negro community and it's burning out of control, you send any one of them, send Whitney Young in to put it out.
Malcolm XIt is the system itself that, that is incapable of producing freedom for the twenty-two million Afro-Americans. Just like a chicken can't lay a duck egg, a chicken can't lay a duck egg, because the system of the chicken isn't constructed in the way to produce a duck egg. And just as that chicken system can't produce, is not capable to, of producing a duck egg, the political and economic system of this country is absolutely incapable of producing freedom and justice and equality and human dignity for the twenty-two million Afro-Americans.
Malcolm XIf a white man puts his arm around me voluntarily, that's brotherhood. But if you - if you hold a gun on him and make him embrace me and pretend to be friendly or brotherly toward me, then that's not brotherhood, that's hypocrisy. And what America is trying to do is pass laws to force whites to pretend that they want Negroes into their schools or into - in their places of employment.
Malcolm XEleanor Roosevelt could easily have told negroes the deceitful maneuvering of the United States government that was going on behind the scenes. She never did it. In my opinion she was just another white woman whose profession was to make it appear that she was on the negro's side. You have a lot of whites who are in this category. Therefore, they have made negro loving a profession.
Malcolm XHow can a Negro say America is his nation? He was brought here in chains; he was put in slavery an worked like a mule for three hundred years; he was separated from his land, his culture, his God, his language!
Malcolm XAmerica'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 XNot 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 XMen who are proud of being black marry black women; women who are proud of being black marry black men.
Malcolm XThe people listening very closely to what the Muslims have always declared. They'll find that in every declaration there's the fact that, the same as, as Moses told Pharaoh, "You're doomed if you don't do so and so," or as Daniel told, I think it was Balthazar or Nebuchadnezzar, "You are doomed if you don't do so and so."
Malcolm X