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.
Sometimes you have to pick the gun up to put the Gun down.
People don't realize how a man's whole life can be changed by one book.
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.
Be peaceful, be courteous, obey the law, respect everyone; but if someone puts his hand on you, send him to the cemetery.
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.
We cannot think of being acceptable to others until we have first proven acceptable to ourselves.
You show me a capitalist, and I'll show you a bloodsucker
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.
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.
So early in my life, I had learned that if you want something, you had better make some noise.
If you have no critics you'll likely have no success.
Truth is on the side of the oppressed.
If you're not ready to die for it, take the word 'freedom' out of your vocabulary.
We need more light about each other. Light creates understanding, understanding creates love, love creates patience, and patience creates unity.
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.
A wise man can play the part of a clown, but a clown can't play the part of a wise man.
The ability to read awoke inside of me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive.
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?
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.
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.
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.
I see America through the eyes of the victim. I don't see any American dream--I see an American nightmare.
I don't even call it violence when it's in self defense; I call it intelligence.
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.
The future belongs to those who prepare for it today.
You don't have to be a man to fight for freedom. All you have to do is to be an intelligent human being.
As long as you are convinced you have never done anything, you can never do anything.
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.
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.
And just because you have colleges and universities doesn't mean you have education.
Concerning non-violence: it is criminal to teach a man not to defend himself when he is the constant victim of brutal attacks.
Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you're a man, you take it.
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.
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.
It is only after slavery and prison that the sweetest appreciation of freedom can come.
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.
One day, may we all meet together in the light of understanding.
If you dont stand for something you fall for everything.
I don't advocate violence; but if a man steps on my toes, I'll step on his...
They cripple the bird's wing, and then condemn it for not flying as fast as they.
Read absolutely everything you get your hands on because you'll never know where you'll get an idea from...
We all like chicken
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]
Only the mistakes were mine.
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.
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.
Western interests: imperialism, colonialism, exploitation, racism, and other negative -isms.
We didn't land on plymouth rock, Plymouth rock landed on us".
You can't have capitalism without racism.
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.
I 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.
Who taught you to hate yourself?
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...
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.
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.
You are either free or not free
An English writer telephoned me from London, asking questions. One was, ‘What’s your alma mater?’ I told him, ‘Books.
... the young people are the ones who most quickly identify with the struggle and the necessity to eliminate the evil conditions that exist.
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.
I Used the Word 'Negro' and I was Firmly Corrected
I believe in human beings, and that all human beings should be respected as such, regardless of their color
Let's cool it, brothers.
History is a people's memory, and without a memory, a man is demoted to the lower animals.
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.
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.
I don't see any American dream; I see an American nightmare.
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.
It is only after the deepest darkness that the greatest joy can come
We're not Americans, we're Africans who happen to be in America. We were kidnapped and brought here against our will from Africa. We didn't land on Plymouth Rock - that rock landed on us.
My family was so poor we were close to eating the holes inside of doughnuts.
How is it possible to write one's autobiography in a world so fast-changing as this?
I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity.-because you can hardly mention anything I am not curious about.
A man curses because he doesn't have the words to say what's on his mind.
Its the hinge that squeaks that gets the grease
A man who stands for nothing will fall for anything.
I'm for truth, no matter who tells it. I'm for justice, no matter who it's for or against.
Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today.
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.
People don’t realize how a man’s whole life can be changed by one book.
These negroes aren't asking for no nation. They wanna crawl back on the plantation.
It seems that some women love to be exploited. when they are not exploited, they exploit the man.
Power in defense of freedom is greater than power on behalf of tyranny and oppression.
My feeling about in-laws was that they were outlaws.
I could spend the rest of my life READING, Just satisfying my CURIOSITY - because you can hardly mention anything I'm not curious about.
Do Your Best Work
I'm for truth, no matter who tells it. I'm for justice, no matter who is for or against it.
Segregation is that which is forced upon inferiors by superiors. But separation is that which is done voluntarily, by two equals- for the good of both.
I actually believed that after living as fully as humanly possible, one should then die violently. I expected then as I still expect today
BOOKS… "The Loom of Language
Time is more important to me then distance
