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They asked if I knew what 'conscientious objector' meant. I told them that when the white man asked me to go off somewhere and fight and maybe die to preserve the way the white man treated the black man in America, then my conscience made me object.

Malcolm X

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Malcolm X
Age: 39 †
Born: 1925
Born: May 19
Died: 1965
Died: February 21
Autobiographer
Human Rights Activist
Muslim Minister
Political Activist
Politician
Omaha
Nebraska
Malcolm Little
El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz
Malcolm Shabazz
Malachi Shabazz
America
Fight
Preserves
Made
Told
Object
Way
Knew
Treated
Men
Maybe
Somewhere
Dies
Meant
Fighting
Conscience
Objector
White
Asked
Conscientious
Black
Objects
Preserve

More quotes by Malcolm X

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I think as an intelligent person you would agree that when you are teaching among oppressed people that they should be relieved of their oppression not 100 or 10 years from now, but right now, you're going to find your talk is going to fall upon sympathetic ears.
Malcolm X
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It has been nine years since the Supreme Court decision outlawing segregated schools, yet less than ten per cent of the Negro students in the South are in integrated schools. That isn't integration, that's tokenism!
Malcolm X
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I don't mean go out and get violent but at the same time you should never be nonviolent unless you run into some nonviolence. I'm nonviolent with those who are nonviolent with me. But when you drop that violence on me, then you've made me go insane, and I'm not responsible for what I do.
Malcolm X
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I grew up in the country on a farm it was whenever someone said even that a snake was eating the chickens or bothering the chickens, we'd kill snakes. We never knew whether that was the snake that did it.
Malcolm X
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This is why integration will not work. It assumes that the two races, black and white, are equal and can be made to live as one. This is not true.
Malcolm X
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We were truly all the same (brothers) - because their belief in one God had removed the white from their minds, the white from their behavior, and the white from their attitude.
Malcolm X
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I see America through the eyes of the victim. I don’t see any American dream I see an American nightmare.
Malcolm X
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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.
Malcolm X
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Only in this form of separation the black man is exploited. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad says that we should be separate, all right, but in this separate state or separate existence, the black man should be given the opportunity and the incentive to do for himself what the white man has done for himself.
Malcolm X
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If you stick a knife nine inches into my back and pull it out three inches, that is not progress.
Malcolm X
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[ Negro leaders] never let the white man know exactly what black people are thinking.
Malcolm X
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Whenever any group can vote in a bloc, and decide the outcome of elections, and it fails to do this, then that group is politically sick.
Malcolm X
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... Any county's moral strength, or its moral weakness, is quickly measurable by the street attire and attitude of its women - especially its young women. Wherever ... spiritual values have been submerged, if not destroyed, by an emphasis upon ... material things, invariably the women reflect it.
Malcolm X
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Instead of working for white man and helping him hold up a government that continues to suppress us socially and, and exploit us economically and oppress us politically, let us go and enter our own territory and use our own talents to uplift ourselves by our own bootstraps. And then he will recognize us for what we are.
Malcolm X
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Negroes don't even like snails! What they're doing is proving they're integrated.
Malcolm X
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I asked inmate in New York, Warden Fay at that time if, if it didn't make a better inmate out of the Negroes who accepted it and he said, Yes. So I asked him then what was it about it that he considered to be so danger, and he, dangerous, and he pointed out that it was the cohesiveness that it produced among the inmates. They stuck together.
Malcolm X
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The cornerstones of this country's operation are economic and political strength and power. The black man doesn't have the economic strength - and it will take time for him to build it. But right now the American black man has the political strength and power to change his destiny overnight.
Malcolm X
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When the whites themselves are attacked, they believe in defending themselves and things of that sort.
Malcolm X
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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.
Malcolm X
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When I said [ I would work with any organization] I would make the, the reservation that I would work with any organization as long as it didn't make us compromise our religious principles.
Malcolm X