Quotes from Malcolm X

Always, every now and then, I had given her a hard time, just to keep her in line. Every once in a while a woman seems to need, in fact wants this too.

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. Progress is healing the wound that the blow made. And they haven't even pulled the knife out much less heal the wound.

If I weren't out here every day battling the white man, I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity - because you can hardly mention anything I'm not curious about.

This is still one of the black man's big troubles today. So many of those so-called "upper class" Negroes are so busy trying to impress on the white man that they are "different from those others" that they can't see they are only helping the white man to keep his low opinion of all Negroes.

My black brothers and sisters—no one will know who we are…until we know who we are! We never will be able to go anywhere until we know where we are!

Mankind's history has proved from one era to another that the true criterion of leadership is spiritual. Men are attracted by spirit. By power, men are forced. Love is engendered by spirit. By power, anxieties are created.

For the white man to ask the black man if he hates him is just like the rapist asking the raped, or the wolf asking the sheep, 'Do you hate me?

I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity.

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 the 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 F.B.I. and the C.I.A. and the I.R.S. all combined can't turn up a thing I got, beyond a car to drive and a seven-room house to live in.

A woman should occasionally be babied enough to show her the man had affection, but beyond that she should be treated firmly. These tough women said that it worked with them. All women, by their nature, are fragile and weak: they are attracted to the male in whom they see strength.

Shorty felt about the war the same way I and most ghetto Negroes did: Whitey owns everything. He wants us to go and bleed for him? Let him fight.