Malcolm X

Power never takes a back step - only in the face of more power."

Malcolm X Speaks, 1965

"The future belongs to those who prepare for it today."

"A jungle is only a place that's heavily vegetated - the soil is so rich and the climate is so good that everything grows, and it doesn't grow in season - it grows all the time."

Malcolm X Speaks, 1965

"If you're born in America with a black skin, you're born in prison."

Interview, June 1963

"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."

Malcolm X Speaks, 1965

"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."

Malcolm X Speaks, 1965

"You show me a capitalist, I'll show you a bloodsucker."

Malcolm X Speaks, 1965

"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."

Malcolm X Speaks, 1965

"We are not fighting for integration, nor are we fighting for separation. We are fighting for recognition as human beings. We are fighting for...human rights."

Speech, Black Revolution, New York, 1964

"It's easy to become a satellite today without even being aware of it. This country can seduce God. Yes, it has that seductive power of dollarism."

Malcolm X Speaks, 1965

"Uncle Sam has no conscience. They don't know what morals are. They don't try and eliminate an evil because it's evil, or because it's illegal, or because it's immoral; they eliminate it only when it threatens their existence."

Malcolm X Speaks, 1965

"The day that the black man takes an uncompromising step and realizes that he's within his rights, when his own freedom is being jeopardized, to use any means necessary to bring about his freedom or put a halt to that injustice, I don't think he'll be by himself."

Oxford Union Society debate, December 3, 1964

"If being a communist or being a capitalist or being a socialist is a crime, first you have to study which of those systems is the most criminal. And then you'll be slow to say which one should be in jail."

Malcolm X Speaks, 1965

"You can't separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom."

Malcolm X Speaks, 1965

[On the assassination of President John F. Kennedy:] "It was, as I saw it, a case of 'the chickens coming home to roost.' I said that the hate in white men had not stopped with the killing of defenseless black people, but that hate, allowed to spread unchecked, had finally struck down this country's Chief Magistrate."

Autobiography (as told to Alex Haley), Chapter 16, 1964

"A segregated school system produces children who, when they graduate, graduate with crippled minds."

Malcolm X Speaks, 1965

"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."

Malcolm X Speaks, 1965

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

Malcolm X Speaks, 1965

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

Malcolm X Speaks, 1965