Malcolm X's Quotes

You're not to be so blind with patriotism that you can't face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or says it.

My alma mater was books, a good library.... I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity.

I'm for truth, no matter who tells it. I'm for justice, no matter who it is for or against. I'm a human being, first and foremost, and as such I'm for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.

Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today.

People don't realize how a man's whole life can be changed by one book.

The main thing you got to remember is that everything in the world is a hustle.

If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.

To me, the thing that is worse than death is betrayal. You see, I could conceive death, but I could not conceive betrayal.

If someone puts their hands on you make sure they never put their hands on anybody else again.

Usually when people are sad, they don't do anything. They just cry over their condition. But when they get angry, they bring about a change.

Be peaceful, be courteous, obey the law, respect everyone; but if someone puts his hand on you, send him to the cemetery.

The media's the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that's power. Because they control the minds of the masses.

So early in my life, I had learned that if you want something, you had better make some noise.

We cannot think of being acceptable to others until we have first proven acceptable to ourselves.

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.

Truth is on the side of the oppressed.

If you have no critics you'll likely have no success.

If you're not ready to die for it, take the word 'freedom' out of your vocabulary.

The ability to read awoke inside of me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive.

We need more light about each other. Light creates understanding, understanding creates love, love creates patience, and patience creates unity.

Don't be in a hurry to condemn because he doesn't do what you do or think as you think or as fast. There was a time when you didn't know what you know today.

To have once been a criminal is no disgrace. To remain a criminal is the disgrace

The only way we'll get freedom for ourselves is to identify ourselves with every oppressed people in the world. We are blood brothers to the people of Brazil, Venezuela, Haiti, Cuba -- yes Cuba too.

A wise man can play the part of a clown, but a clown can't play the part of a wise man.

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.

How can you thank a man for giving you what's already yours? How then can you thank him for giving you only part of what is yours?

I see America through the eyes of the victim. I don't see any American dream--I see an American nightmare.

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.

You can't hate the roots of a tree and not hate the tree.

Don't condemn if you see a person has a dirty glass of water, just show them the clean glass of water that you have. When they inspect it, you won't have to say that yours is better." -said by Elijah Muhammad to Malcolm X

لقد غيرت القراءة مجرى حياتي تغييراً جذرياً ولم أكن أهدف من ورائها الى كسب أية شهادات لتحسين مركزي وانما كنت اريد ان احيا فكريا.

I don't even call it violence when it's in self defense; I call it intelligence.

The future belongs to those who prepare for it today.

We declare our right on this earth...to be a human being, to be respected as a human being, to be given the rights of a human being in this society, on this earth, in this day, which we intend to bring into existence by any means necessary.

Concerning non-violence: it is criminal to teach a man not to defend himself when he is the constant victim of brutal attacks.

Children have a lesson adults should learn, to not be ashamed of failing, but to get up and try again. Most of us adults are so afraid, so cautious, so 'safe,' and therefore so shrinking and rigid and afraid that it is why so many humans fail. Most middle-aged adults have resigned themselves to failure.

I believe that there will be ultimately be a clash between the oppressed and those who do the oppressing. I believe that there will be a clash between those who want freedom, justice and equality for everyone and those who want to continue the system of exploitation. I believe that there will be that kind of clash, but I don't think it will be based on the color of the skin...

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.

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.

I always tell my students that Malcolm X came both to his spirituality and to his consciousness as a thinker when he had solitude to read. Unfortunately, tragically, like so many young black males, that solitude only came in prison.

Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you're a man, you take it.

And just because you have colleges and universities doesn't mean you have education.

Anytime you find someone more successful than you are, especially when you're both engaged in the same business - you know they're doing something that you aren't.

You don't have to be a man to fight for freedom. All you have to do is to be an intelligent human being.

I believe in the brotherhood of man, all men, but I don't believe in brotherhood with anybody who doesn't want brotherhood with me. I believe in treating people right, but I'm not going to waste my time trying to treat somebody right who doesn't know how to return the treatment

You don't stick a knife in a man's back nine inches and then pull it out six inches and say you're making progress ... No matter how much respect, no matter how much recognition, whites show towards me, as far as I am concerned, as long as it is not shown to everyone of our people in this country, it doesn't exist for me.

One day, may we all meet together in the light of understanding.

You get your freedom by letting your enemy know that you'll do anything to get it. Then you'll get it. It's the only way you'll get it.

It's just like when you've got some coffee that's too black, which means it's too strong. What do you do? You integrate it with cream, you make it weak. But if you pour too much cream in it, you won't even know you ever had coffee. It used to be hot, it becomes cool. It used to be strong, it becomes weak. It used to wake you up, now it puts you to sleep.

As long as you are convinced you have never done anything, you can never do anything.

I believe in recognizing every human being as a human being--neither white, black, brown, or red; and when you are dealing with humanity as a family there's no question of integration or intermarriage. It's just one human being marrying another human being or one human being living around and with another human being.

اذا كان الانسان مع الله كان الله معه وأرسل له عند الحاجة علامات تدل على ذلك.

لقد كنت في اسفل سافلين في قاع المجتمع الامريكي وعندما اهتديت الى الله والى الاسلام تغير مجرى حياتي.

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

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 is for or against. I’m a human being first and foremost, and as such I’m for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.

True Islam taught me that it takes all of the religious, political, economic, psychological, and racial ingredients, or characteristics, to make the Human Family and the Human Society complete.

By any means necessary.

There is no better than adversity. Every defeat, every heartbreak, every loss, contains its own seed, its own lesson on how to improve your performance next time.

I 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.

There is nothing in our book, the Qur'an, that teaches us to suffer peacefully. Our religion teaches us to be intelligent. Be peaceful, be courteous, obey the law, respect everyone; but if someone lays a hand on you, send him to the cemetery.

I for one believe that if you give people a thorough understanding of what confronts them and the basic causes that produce it, they'll create their own program, and when the people create a program, you get action.

I remember one night at Muzdalifa with nothing but the sky overhead I lay awake amid sleeping Muslim brothers and I learned that pilgrims from every land--every color, and class, and rank; high officials and the beggar alike--all snored in the same language.

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.

Despite my firm convictions, I have been always a man who tries to face facts, and to accept the reality of life as new experience and new knowledge unfolds it. I have always kept an open mind, which is necessary to the flexibility that must go hand in hand with every form of intelligent search for truth.

They cripple the bird's wing, and then condemn it for not flying as fast as they.

لقد تعلمت باكراَ إن الحق لا يعطي لمن يسكت عنه, وإن على المرء أن يحدث بعض الضجيج إن أراد أن يحصل على شيء

And when I speak, I don't speak as a Democrat. Or a Republican. Nor an American. I speak as a victim of America's so-called democracy. You and I have never seen democracy - all we've seen is hypocrisy. When we open our eyes today and look around America, we see America not through the eyes of someone who has enjoyed the fruits of Americanism. We see America through the eyes of someone who has been the victim of Americanism. We don't see any American dream. We've experienced only the American nightmare.

Read absolutely everything you get your hands on because you'll never know where you'll get an idea from...

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

This was my first lesson about gambling: if you see somebody winning all the time, he isn't gambling, he's cheating. Later on in life, if I were continuously losing in any gambling situation, I would watch very closely.

هنا يرقد رجل اصفر قتله رجل اسود في حرب رجل أبيض كان قد قتل كل الرجال الحمر

I'm a man who believes that I died 20 years ago. And I live like a man who is dead already. I have no fear whatsoever of anybody or anything.

America's greatest crime against the black man was not slavery or lynching, but that he was taught to wear a mask of self-hate and self-doubt.

ارى ان السجن يأتي بعد الجامعة مباشرة كأنسب مكان لمن يريد ان يفكر

It"s good to keep wide-open ears and listen to what everybody else has to say, but when you come to make a decision, you have to weigh all of what you"ve heard on its own, and place it where it belongs, and come to a decision for yourself; you"ll never regret it. But if you form the habit of taking what someone else says about a thing without checking it out for yourself, you"ll find that other people will have you hating your friends and loving your enemies.

لقد اوسع الحج نطاق تفكيري وفتح بصيرتي فرأيت في أسبوعين ما لم أره في تسع وثلاثين سنة.

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

لا يدرك الناس أن كتابا واحدا قد يغير حياة انسان

We all like chicken

انني احترم حق كل انسان في ان يؤمن بما يعتقد انه الصواب، وانتظر أن أعامل بالمثل.

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.

Times change so quickly that if you and I don't keep up with the times, we'll find ourselves with an umbrella in our hand, over our head, when the sun is out. Or we'll find ourselves standing in the rain, with the umbrella inside the door.

Only the mistakes were mine.

إن عبادة الإله الواحد وحدها ستقرب الانسان من السلام الذي يتكلم عليه الجميع ولايفعل أحد شيئاً لتحقيقه.

We didn't land on plymouth rock, Plymouth rock landed on us".

إذا رأيت شخصاً أفضل منك بشيء فاعلم أنه يفعل شيء لا تفعله أنت

The tragedy of Tupac is that his untimely passing is representative of too many young black men in this country....If we had lost Oprah Winfrey at 25, we would have lost a relatively unknown, local market TV anchorwoman. If we had lost Malcolm X at 25, we would have lost a hustler named Detroit Red. And if I had left the world at 25, we would have lost a big-band trumpet player and aspiring composer--just a sliver of my eventual life potential.

You can cuss out colonialism, imperialism, and all other kinds of ism, but it's hard for you to cuss that dollarism. When they drop those dollars on you, your soul goes.

A man who stands for nothing will fall for anything.

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, and even eaten with people who in America would have been considered white, but the white attitude was removed from their minds by the religion of Islam. I have never before seen sincere and true brotherhood practiced by all together, irrespective of their color.

Western interests: imperialism, colonialism, exploitation, racism, and other negative -isms.

I believe in human beings, and that all human beings should be respected as such, regardless of their color

إنني لا أحتمل شخصاَ لايحمل الساعة لأن ذلك يوضح لي إنه لا يقدر الوقت

إن الناس لا تعرف أن كتاباً واحداً كفيلاً بأن يغير مجرى حياة الإنسان

Time is on the side of the oppressed today, it's against the oppressor. Truth is on the side of the oppressed today, it's against the oppressor. You don't need anything else.

... the young people are the ones who most quickly identify with the struggle and the necessity to eliminate the evil conditions that exist.

انني كنت أسفل سافلين في قاع المجتمع الأمريكي عندما اهتديت الى الله و الى الإسلام تغير مجرى حياتي

Who taught you to hate yourself?

I have more respect for a man who lets me know where he stands, even if he's wrong. Than the one who comes up like an angel and is nothing but a devil.

في كل الأعمال يحدد نجاحنا أو فشلنا مدى تقديرنا وإحترامنا للوقت

إن الزوجة في الحضارة الغربية تفقد جاذبيتها بمجرد ما تفقد جمالها المادي أما الإسلام فيحثنا على رؤية جمال المرأة الباطني

Don't be bitter. Remember Lot's wife when they kill me, and they surely will. You have to use all of your energy to do what it is you have to do. [To his wife Betty Shabazz]

Malcolm X and Edmund Burke shared an appreciation of this important insight, this painful truth--that the state wants men to be weak and timid, not strong and proud.

Sitting at the table doesn't make you a diner, unless you eat some of what's on that plate. Being here in America doesn't make you an American. Being born here in America doesn't make you an American.

I grew up in the midst of poverty but every black kid that I knew could read and write. We have to talk about the fact that we cannot educate for critical consciousness if we have a group of people who cannot access Fanon, Cabral, or Audre Lorde because they can’t read or write. How did Malcolm X radicalize his consciousness? He did it through books. If you deprive working-class and poor black people of access to reading and writing, you are making them that much farther removed from being a class that can engage in revolutionary resistance.

To the same degree that your understanding of and attitude towards Afrika becomes more positive, your understanding of and attitude towards yourself will also becomes more positive...

عرفت أن الحقيقة تصل الى قلوب العصاة إذا عرفوا و اعترفوا بأنهم عصاة

History is a people's memory, and without a memory, a man is demoted to the lower animals.

إن الإستماع فن من الفنون. عندما يتكلم الرجل أنتبه إلى صوته لأعرف هل هو صادق فيما يقوله

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.

An English writer telephoned me from London, asking questions. One was, ‘What’s your alma mater?’ I told him, ‘Books.

هل تعرف إن بعض أعظم الرجال الذين عرفهم التاريخ لم يعترف بهم إلا بعدما واراهم التراب؟

I certainly wasn't seeking any degree, the way a college confers a status symbol upon its students. My homemade education gave me, with every additional book that I read, a little bit more sensitivity to the deafness, dumbness and blindness that was afflicting the black race in America. Not long ago, an English writer telephoned me, asking questions. One was, "What's your alma mater?" I told him, "Books.

Here's an interesting form of murder we came up with: assassination. You know what's interesting about assassination? Well, not only does it change those popularity polls in a big fucking hurry, but it's also interesting to notice who it is we assassinate. Did you ever notice who it is? Stop to think who it is we kill? It's always people who've told us to live together in harmony and try to love one another. Jesus, Gandhi, Lincoln, John Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, John Lennon, they all said, "Try to live together peacefully." BAM! Right in the fucking head. Apparently we're not ready for that.

Any time you beg another man to set you free, you will never be free. Freedom is something that you have to do for yourselves.

He said he wanted to present an alternative; that it might be easier for whites to accept Martin’s proposals after hearing him (Malcolm X).

When I am dead--I say it that way because from the things I know, I do not expect to live long enough to read this book in its finished form--I want you to just watch and see if I'm not right in what I say: that the white man, in his press, is going to identify me with "hate". He will make use of me dead, as he has made use of me alive, as a convenient symbol, of "hatred"--and that will help him escape facing the truth that all I have been doing is holding up a mirror to reflect, to show, the history of unspeakable crimes that his race has committed against my race.

I learned early that crying out in protest could accomplish things. My older brothers and sister had started to school when, sometimes, they would come in and ask for a buttered biscuit or something and my mother, impatiently, would tell them no. But I would cry out and make a fuss until I got what I wanted. I remember well how my mother asked me why I couldn't be a nice boy like Wilfred; but I would think to myself that Wilfred, for being so nice and quiet, often stayed hungry. So early in life, I had learned that if you want something, you had better make some noise.

عندما تغير فلسفتك تغير طريقة تفكيرك .. وعندما تغير طريقة تفكيرك تغير مواقفك .. وعندما تغير مواقفك تغير سلوكك , وهنا .. تستطيع الشروع في العمل الجاد

Yo, Malcolm X said it best. “The most disrespected person in America is the Black woman. The most unprotected person in America is the Black woman. The most neglected person in America is the Black woman.

And because I had been a hustler, I knew better than all whites knew, and better than nearly all of the black 'leaders' knew, that actually the most dangerous black man in America was the ghetto hustler. Why do I say this? The hustler, out there in the ghetto jungles, has less respect for the white power structure than any other Negro in North America. The ghetto hustler is internally restrained by nothing. He has no religion, no concept of morality, no civic responsibility, no fear--nothing. To survive, he is out there constantly preying upon others, probing for any human weakness like a ferret. The ghetto hustler is forever frustrated, restless, and anxious for some 'action'. Whatever he undertakes, he commits himself to it fully, absolutely. What makes the ghetto hustler yet more dangerous is his 'glamour' image to the school-dropout youth in the ghetto.These ghetto teen-agers see the hell caught by their parents struggling to get somewhere, or see that they have given up struggling in the prejudiced, intolerant white man’s world. The ghetto teen-agers make up their own minds they would rather be like the hustlers whom they see dressed ‘sharp’ and flashing money and displaying no respect for anybody or anything. So the ghetto youth become attracted to the hustler worlds of dope, thievery, prostitution, and general crime and immorality.

عاهدت الله على الا أنسى أن الاسلام هو الذى اعطانى الاجنحة التى احلق بها ولم انس ذلك ابدا ... لم أنسه لحظة واحدة

Truth does not change, only our awareness of it.

A man curses because he doesn't have the words to say what's on his mind.

لن يعرف احد ماهي هويتنا إذا لم نعرفها نحن، واذا لم نعرفها بقينا حيث نحن.

Ignorance of each other is what has made unity impossible in the past. Therefore we need enlightenment. We need more light about each other. Light creates understanding, understanding creates love, love creates patience, and patience creates unity. Once we have more knowledge (light) about each other, we will stop condemning each other and a United front will be brought about.

It is only after the deepest darkness that the greatest joy can come

You are either free or not free

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.

اذا لم تقف لشيء ستقع لأي شيء

I Used the Word 'Negro' and I was Firmly Corrected

Let's cool it, brothers.

إن لدي من الشجاعة مايسمح بأن اقول لك إنني لا أعرف ما هي فلسفتي ولكنني رجل مرن

I actually believed that after living as fully as humanly possible, one should then die violently. I expected then as I still expect today

He said, one time, that no true leader burdened his followers with a greater load than they could carry, and no true leader sets too fast a pace for his follows to keep up.

How is it possible to write one's autobiography in a world so fast-changing as this?

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. I

وانا على يقين ان امريكا فى امس الحاجة الحاجة الى الاسلام

Its the hinge that squeaks that gets the grease

أؤمن أن على المرء أن يعيش حياته بالطول والعرض ، وليكن موته عنيفًا

إذا كان هناك من يقوم بعمل يشبه عملك ويتفوق عليك فهو لامحالة يفعل شيئا لاتفعله

I read aimlessly, until I learned to read selectively, with a purpose. - Malcom X

لكنني لا أخشى أياَ منهم لأنني أملك كل ما أحتاجه, أملك الحقيقة

إن حسن المعاملة لا يعني لي شيئاً ما دام الرجل الأبيض لن ينظر إليّ أبداً كما ينظر الى نفسه

I don't see any American dream; I see an American nightmare.

A man who tosses worms in the river isn’t 't necessarily a friend of the fish. All the fish who take him for a friend, who think the worm’s got no hook in it, usually end up in the frying pan.

سواء كان ما يستعمله الإنسان رصاصاَ أو بطاقات اقتراع فإن عليه أن يحسن الرماية وألا يستهدف الدمية ولكن من يحركها

Tommy moved on. "Lash, your people have been oppressed for hundreds of years. It's time to strike back. Look, you don't have your MBA yet - they haven't completely juiced you of your usefulness yet. Would Martin Luther King back down from this challenge? Malcolm X? James Brown? Don't you have a dream? Don't you feel good, like you knew that you would, now?

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.

أن السبيل الوحيد الى الحقيقة هو الإعتراف بالذنب

إن مشتري المسروق أنذل من السارق لأنه يسرق مرتين

I came here to tell the truth - and if the truth condemns America, then she stands condemned!

If you are in a country that is progressive, the woman is progressive. If you're in a country that reflects the consciousness toward the importance of education, it's because the woman is aware of the importance of education. But in every backward country you'll find the women are backward, and in every country where education is not stressed its because the women don't have education.

Any person who claims to have deep feeling for other human beings should think a long, long time before he votes to have other men kept behind bars--caged. I am not saying there shouldn't be prisons, but there shouldn't be bars. Behind bars, a man never reforms. He will never forget. He will never get completely over the memory of the bars.

يجب ان نتعلم من الاطفال عدم الخجل من الفشل و ان نقوم و نعيد الكرة

كانت حياتي سلسة من التحولات

Tell him that he and all of the other moderate Negroes who are getting somewhere need to always remember that it was us extremists who made it possible.

I'm for truth, no matter who tells it. I'm for justice, no matter who it's for or against.

I say, sir, that you can never make an intelligent judgment without evidence.

I think that an objective reader may see how in the society to which I was exposed as a black youth here in America, for me to wind up in a prison was really just about inevitable. It happens to so many thousands of black youth.

I will never say that progress is being made. If you stick a knife in my back nine inches and pull it out six inches, there's no progress. If you pull it all the way out that's not progress. The progress is healing the wound that's below, that the blow made. And they haven't even begun to pull the knife out, much less pull, heal the wound... They won't even admit the knife is there.

I later heard somewhere, or read, that Malcolm X telephoned an apology to the reporter. But this was the kind of evidence which caused many close observers of the Malcolm X phenomenon to declare in absolute seriousness that he was the only Negro in America who could either start a race riot-or stop one. When I once quoted this to him, tacitly inviting his comment, he told me tartly, "I don't know if I could start one. I don't know if I'd want to stop one.

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.

Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today.

These negroes aren't asking for no nation. They wanna crawl back on the plantation.

Even Samson, the world's strongest man, was destroyed by the woman who slept in his arms. she was the one whose words hurt him.

كنت قد تركت جزءا من نفسى فى مكة المكرمة وأخذت جزءا منها معى الى الابد

لو كانت المسيحية قد وجدت في ألمانيا لكان ستة ملايين من اليهود مايزالون على قيد الحياة

أنت تثق فيهم, أما أنا فلا. لقد درستَ عنهم في المدارس ماأرادوك أن تدرسه أما أنا فقد درستهم في الشوارع والسجون, أي على الطبيعة

لقد تكلمت مع رجال كانوا في السجون و أدهشني أنهم نسوا كل وصماتها إلا وصمة القضبان

Why, when all of my ancestors are snake-bitten, and I’m snake-bitten, and I warn my children to avoid snakes, what does that snake sound like accusing me of hate-teaching?

I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity.-because you can hardly mention anything I am not curious about.

One call that I never will forget came at close to four A.M., waking me; he must have just gotten up in Los Angeles. His voice said, "Alex Haley?" I said, sleepily, "Yes? Oh, hey, Malcolm!" His voice said, "I trust you seventy percent" -- and then he hung up. I lay a short time thinking about him and I went back to sleep feeling warmed by that call, as I still am warmed to remember it. Neither of us ever mentioned it." The Autobiography of Malcolm X

We have the power those who came before us have given us, to move beyond the place where they were standing. We have the trees, and water, and sun, and our children. Malcolm X does not live in the dry texts of his words as we read them; he lives in the energy we generate and use to move along the visions we share with him. We are making the future as well as bonding to survive the enormous pressures of the present, and that is what it means to be a part of history.

America is subsidizing what is left of the prestige and strength of the once mighty Britain. The sun has set forever on that monocled, pith-helmeted resident colonialist, sipping tea with his delicate lady in the non-white colonies being systematically robbed of every valuable resource. Britain's superfluous royalty and nobility now exist by charging tourists to inspect the once baronial castles, and by selling memoirs, perfumes, autographs, titles, and even themselves.

The White liberal is the worst enemy to America and the worst enemy to the Black man. Let me first explain what I mean by this White liberal. In America there’s no such thing as Democrats and Republicans anymore. That’s antiquated. In America you have liberals and conservatives. This is what the American political structure boils down to among Whites. The only people who are still living in the past and thinks in terms of “I’m a Democrat” or “I’m a Republican” is the American Negro. He’s the one who runs around bragging about party affiliation and he’s the one who sticks to the Democrat or sticks to the Republican, but White people in America are divided into two groups, liberals and Republicans…or rather, liberals and conservatives. And when you find White people vote in the political picture, they’re not divided in terms of Democrats and Republicans, they’re divided consistently as conservatives and as liberal. The Democrats who are conservative vote with Republicans who are conservative. Democrats who are liberals vote with Republicans who are liberals. You find this in Washington, DC. Now the White liberals aren’t White people who are for independence, who are liberal, who are moral, who are ethical in their thinking, they are just a faction of White people who are jockeying for power the same as the White conservatives are a faction of White people who are jockeying for power. Now they are fighting each other for booty, for power, for prestige and the one who is the football in the game is the Negro. Twenty million Black people in this country are a political football, a political pawn an economic football, an economic pawn, a social football, a social pawn...

I suppose that it was inevitable that my word-base broadened. I could now for the first time pick up a book and read and now begin to understand what the book was saying. Anyone who has read a great deal can imagine the new world that opened. Let me tell you something: from then until I left that prison, in every free moment I had, if I was not reading in the library, I was reading in my bunk. You couldn’t have gotten me out of my books with a wedge...Months passed without my even thinking about being imprisoned. In fact, up to then, I never had been so truly free in my life.

You can’t hate the roots of the tree without ending up hating the tree. You can’t hate your origin without ending up hating yourself. You can’t hate the land, your motherland, the place that you come from, and we can’t hate Africa without ending up hating ourselves. The Black man in the Western Hemisphere—North America, Central America, South America, and in the Caribbean—is the best example of how one can be made, skillfully, to hate himself that you can find anywhere on this earth.

I tell sincere white people, 'Work in conjunction with us- each of us working among our own kind.' Let sincere white individuals find all other white people they can who feel as they do- and let them form their own all-white groups, to work trying to convert other white people who are thinking and acting so racist. Let sincere whites go and teach non-violence to white people! We will completely respect our white co-workers. They will deserve every credit. We will give them every credit. We will meanwhile be working among our own kind, in our own black communities- showing and teaching black men in ways that only other black men can- that the black man has got to help himself. Working separately, the sincere white people and sincere black people actually will be working together. In our mutual sincerity we might be able to show a road to the salvation of America's very soul.

All I had done was to improve on their strategy, and it was the beginning of a very important lesson in life - that anytime you find someone more successful than you are, especially when you're both engaged in the same business - you know they're doing something that you aren't.

بدأت أدرك أهمية السجاد عند المسلمين. كان لكل شخص سجادة صلاة ولكل زوجين أو جماعة من الناس سجاد كبير.. وصلى المسلمون في تلك الغرفة كل على سجادته ثم فرشوا فوق سجاد كبير منديلاً وأكلوا عليه فأصبح السجاد غرفة طعام.. ثم حملوا الصحون والمنديل وجلسوا على السجاد فأصبح السجاد غرفة جلوس، وكانوا من قبل يفترشونه فكان غرفة نوم.. حينذاك أدركت لماذا كان تاجر المسروقات في بوسطن يدفع لنا كل تلك المبالغ في السجاد الشرقي، أدركت أن غلاءه يعود إلى اتقانه الذي يعود إلى أهميته في بلاد له فيها كل هذه الوجه من الاستعمال

But let’s not forget the Jew. Anybody that gives even a just criticism of the Jew is instantly labeled anti-Semite. The Jew cries louder than anybody else if anybody criticizes him. You can tell the truth about any minority in America, but make a true observation about the Jew, and if it doesn’t 't pat him on the back, then he uses his grip on the news media to label you anti-Semite.

A man with a rifle or a club can only be stopped by a person who defends himself with a rifle or a club. That's equality. If the United States government doesn't want you and me to have rifles, then take the rifles away from those racists. If they don't want you and me to use clubs, take the clubs away from the racists. If they don't want you and me to get violent, then stop the racists from being violent. Don't teach us non-violence!!!

Any time you throw your weight behind a political party that controls two thirds of the government and that party can’t keep the promise that it made to you during election time and you’re dumb enough to walk around continuing to identify yourself with that party, you’re not only a chump but you’re a traitor to your race.

The world since Adam has been white—and corrupt. The world of tomorrow will be black—and righteous. In the white world there has been nothing but slavery, suffering, death and colonialism. In the black world of tomorrow, there will be true freedom, justice and equality for all. And that day is coming—sooner than you think.

You see, Islam is the only religion that gives both husband and wife a true understanding of what love is. The Western “love” concept, you take it apart, it really is lust. But love transcends just the physical. Love is disposition, behaviour, attitude, thoughts, likes, dislikes - these things make a beautiful woman, a beautiful wife. This is the beauty that never fades. You find in your Western civilisation that when a man’s wife’s physical beauty fails, she loses her attraction. But Islam teaches us to look into the woman, and teaches her to look into us.

On Slavery: The saddest slap in the face is we have NO monument, no real statues or memorials, no special day of Atonement or Remembrance (NOT ONE), no thanks for 400+ years of free labor, forced servitude across the Trans-Atlantic, ass beatings, buying ourselves and families out of slavery, rape and plunder...but everyone else has monuments, special museums, and even movies. This is what America thinks of black people, so-called black president and all, who has been largely silent on this subject...we'll even celebrate Leprechauns, Easter Bunnies, and Secretary's Day before we acknowledge our history.

Thoughtful white people know they are inferior to black people. Anyone who has studied the genetic phase of biology knows that white is considered recessive and black is considered dominant. When you want strong coffee, you ask for black coffee. If you want it light, you want it weak, integrated with white milk. Just like these Negroes who weaken themselves and their race by this integrating and intermixing with whites. If you want bread with no nutritional value, you ask for white bread. All the good that was in it has been bleached out of it, and it will constipate you. If you want pure flour, you ask for dark flour, whole-wheat flour. If you want pure sugar, you want dark sugar.

I have often reflected upon the new vistas that reading 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. I certainly wasn’t seeking any degree, the way a college confers a status symbol upon its students. My home made education gave me, with every additional book that I read, a little bit more sensitivity to the deafness, dumbness, and blindness that was afflicting the black race in America. 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.

You get your freedom by not being confined. You get freedom by letting your enemy know that you'll do anything to get your freedom. You'll get it. It's the only way you'll get it...So dont you run around here trying to make friends with somebody who's depriving you of your rights. They're not your friends. No, they're your enemies. Treat them like that and fight them, and you'll get your freedom. And after you get your freedom, your enemey will respect you. He will respect you. I say that with no hate. I have no hate in me. I don't have any hate, but I've got some sense...I'm not going to let somebody who hates me to tell me to love him. I'm not that way out.

ولكن الصلاة كانت اصعب امتحان مررت به فى حياتى كلها .كان الايمان كااقتناع نظرى سهلا اما السجود فقد احتجت معة الى اسبوع كامل من الاخذ والرد وانت تعرف الخلفية التى كنت انطلق منها وأننى لم أثن ركبتى ابدا الا التقاط قفل بيت اسرقة فكنت اهم بالسجود فأشعر بالحرج والخجل وأتراجع . ذلك أن الاعتراف بالذنب أمام الله وطلب مغفرته شئ عسير على المذنب وعندما نجحت فى ذلك اخيرا وقعت ساجدا ولم اعرف ماذا اقول !

Eventually my mother suffered a complete breakdown, and the court orders were finally signed. They took her to the State Mental Hospital at Kalamazoo. My mother remained in the same hospital at Kalamazoo for about 26 years. My last visit, when I knew I would never come to see her again-there-was in 1952. I was twenty-seven. My brother Philbert had told me that on his last visit, she had recognized him somewhat. "In spots" he said. But she didn't recognize me at all. She stared at me. She didn't know who I was. Her mind, when I tried to talk, to reach her, was somewhere else. I asked, "Mama, do you know what day it is?" She said, staring, "All the people have gone." I can't describe how I felt. The woman who had brought me into the world, and nursed me, and advised me, and chastised me, and loved me, didn't know me. It was as if I was trying to walk up the side of a hill of feathers." -Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X

They know that as long as they keep us undereducated, or with an inferior education, it’s impossible for us to compete with them for job openings. And as long as we can’t compete with them and get a decent job, we’re trapped. We are low-wage earners. We have to live in a run-down neighborhood, which means our children go to inferior schools. They get inferior education. And when they grow up, they fall right into the same cycle again. This is the American way. This is the American democracy that she tries to sell to the whole world as being that which will solve the problems of other people too.

The greatest miracle Christianity has achieved in America is that the black man in white Christian hands has not grown violent. It is a miracle that 22 million black people have not risen up against their oppressors – in which they would have been justified by all moral criteria, and even by the democratic tradition! It is a miracle that a nation of black people has so fervently continued to believe in a turn-the-other-cheek and heaven-for-you-after-you-die philosophy! It is a miracle that the American black people have remained a peaceful people, while catching all the centuries of hell that they have caught, here in white man’s heaven! The miracle is that the white man’s puppet Negro ‘leaders’, his preachers and the educated Negroes laden with degrees, and others who have been allowed to wax fat off their black poor brothers, have been able to hold the black masses quiet until now.

American society makes it next to impossible for humans to meet in America and not be conscious of their color differences. And we both agreed that if racism could be removed, America could offer a society where rich and poor could truly live like human beings....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.

I want to say before I go on that I have never previously told anyone my sordid past in detail. I haven't done it now to sound as though I might be proud of how bad, how evil, I was. But people are always speculating-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. Today, when everything that I do has an urgency, I would not spend one hour in the preparation of a book which had the ambition to perhaps titillate some readers. But I am spending many hours because the full story is the best way that I know to have it seen, and understood, that I had sunk to the very bottom of the American white man's society when-soon now, in prison-I found Allah and the religion of Islam and it completely transformed my life.

When Pope Pius XII died, LIFE magazine carried a picture of him in his private study kneeling before a black Christ. What was the source of their information? All white people who have studied history and geography know that Christ was a black man. Only the poor, brainwashed American Negro has been made to believe that Christ was white, to maneuver him into worshiping the white man. After becoming a Muslim in prison, I read almost everything I could put my hands on in the prison library. I began to think back on everything I had read and especially with the histories, I realized that nearly all of them read by the general public have been made into white histories. I found out that the history-whitening process either had left out great things that black men had done, or some of the great black men had gotten whitened.

We need allies who are going to help us achieve a victory, not allies who are going to tell us to be nonviolent. If a white man wants to be your ally, what does he think of John Brown? You know what John Brown did? He went to war. He was a white man who went to war against white people to help free slaves. He wasn’t nonviolent. White people call John Brown a nut. Go read the history, go read what all of them say about John Brown. They’re trying to make it look like he was a nut, a fanatic. They made a movie on it, I saw a movie on the screen one night. Why, I would be afraid to get near John Brown if I go by what other white folks say about him. But they depict him in this image because he was willing to shed blood to free the slaves. And any white man who is ready and willing to shed blood for your freedom—in the sight of other whites, he’s nuts. As long as he wants to come up with some nonviolent action, they go for that, if he’s liberal, a nonviolent liberal, a love-everybody liberal. But when it comes time for making the same kind of contribution for your and my freedom that was necessary for them to make for their own freedom, they back out of the situation. So, when you want to know good white folks in history where black people are concerned, go read the history of John Brown. That was what I call a white liberal. But those other kind, they are questionable. So if we need white allies in this country, we don’t need those kind who compromise. We don’t need those kind who encourage us to be polite, responsible, you know. We don’t need those kind who give us that kind of advice. We don’t need those kind who tell us how to be patient. No, if we want some white allies, we need the kind that John Brown was, or we don’t need you. And the only way to get those kind is to turn in a new direction.

My birth certificate says: Female Negro Mother: Mary Anne Irby, 22, Negro Father: Jack Austin Woodson, 25, Negro In Birmingham, Alabama, Martin Luther King Jr. is planning a march on Washington, where John F. Kennedy is president. In Harlem, Malcolm X is standing on a soapbox talking about a revolution. Outside the window of University Hospital, snow is slowly falling. So much already covers this vast Ohio ground. In Montgomery, only seven years have passed since Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a city bus. I am born brown-skinned, black-haired and wide-eyed. I am born Negro here and Colored there and somewhere else, the Freedom Singers have linked arms, their protests rising into song: Deep in my heart, I do believe that we shall overcome someday. and somewhere else, James Baldwin is writing about injustice, each novel, each essay, changing the world. I do not yet know who I’ll be what I’ll say how I’ll say it . . . Not even three years have passed since a brown girl named Ruby Bridges walked into an all-white school. Armed guards surrounded her while hundreds of white people spat and called her names. She was six years old. I do not know if I’ll be strong like Ruby. I do not know what the world will look like when I am finally able to walk, speak, write . . . Another Buckeye! the nurse says to my mother. Already, I am being named for this place. Ohio. The Buckeye State. My fingers curl into fists, automatically This is the way, my mother said, of every baby’s hand. I do not know if these hands will become Malcolm’s—raised and fisted or Martin’s—open and asking or James’s—curled around a pen. I do not know if these hands will be Rosa’s or Ruby’s gently gloved and fiercely folded calmly in a lap, on a desk, around a book, ready to change the world . . .

Brothers and sisters, I am here to tell you that I charge the white man. I charge the white man with being the greatest murderer on earth. I charge the white man with being the greatest kidnapper on earth. There is no place in this world that this man can go and say he created peace and harmony. Everywhere he's gone, he's created havoc. Everywhere he's gone, he's created destruction. So I charge him. I charge him with being the greates kidnapper on this earth! I charge him with being the greatest murderer on this earth! I charge him with being the greatest robber and enslaver on this earth! I charge the white man with being the greatest swine-eater on this earth. The greatest drunkard on this earth! He can't deny the charges! You can't deny the charges! We're the living proof *of* those charges! You and I are the proof. You're not an American, you are the victim of America. You didn't have a choice coming over here. He didn't say, "Black man, black woman, come on over and help me build America". He said, "N(i)gger, get down in the bottom of that boat and I'm taking you over there to help me build America". Being born here does not make you an American. I am not an American, you are not an American. You are one of the 22 million black people who are the *victims* of America. You and I, we've never see any democracy. We didn't see any... democracy on the-the cotton fields of Georgia, wasn't no democracy down there. We didn't see any democracy. We didn't see any democracy on the streets of Harlem or on the streets of Brooklyn or on the streets of Detroit or Chicago. Ain't no democracy down there. No, we've never seem democracy! All we've seen is hypocrisy! We don't see any American Dream. We've experienced only the American Nightmare!