Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Helping
Enter
Economically
Government
Recognize
Exploits
Men
Instead
Socially
Hold
Uplifting
Bootstraps
Talent
Politically
Oppress
Working
Talents
Uplift
White
Continues
Suppress
Use
Territory
Exploit

More quotes by Malcolm X

Image
And what makes the whites who have these middle-class values have those values? Where did they get it? They didn't have these same values four hundred years, five hundred years ago.
Malcolm X
Image
A segregated school system produces children who, when they graduate, they do with crippled minds.
Malcolm X
Image
I could see from this, that perhaps if white Americans could accept the Oneness of God, then perhaps, too, they could accept in reality the Oneness of Man - and cease to measure, and hinder, and harm others in terms of their differences in color.
Malcolm X
Image
The economic philosophy of black nationalism only means that our people need to be re-educated into the importance of controlling the economy of the community in which we live, which means that we won't have to constantly be involved in picketing and boycotting other people in other communities in order to get jobs.
Malcolm X
Image
You spend so much time barking up the civil-rights tree, you don't even know there's a human-rights tree on the same floor.
Malcolm X
Image
We are nonviolent with people who are nonviolent with us.
Malcolm X
Image
I feel like a man who has been asleep somewhat and under someone else's control. I feel that what I'm thinking and saying is now for myself. Before it was for and by the guidance of Elijah Muhammad. Now I think with my own mind, sir!
Malcolm X
Image
The American Negro has been entirely brainwashed from ever seeing or thinking of himself, as he should, as a part of the non-white peoples of the world.
Malcolm X
Image
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.
Malcolm X
Image
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 the next time.
Malcolm X
Image
You can't legislate good will - that comes through education.
Malcolm X
Image
Who taught you to hate the color of your skin? Who taught you to hate the texture of your hair? Who taught you to hate the shape of your nose and the shape of your lips? Who taught you to hate yourself from the top of your head to the soles of your feet?
Malcolm X
Image
It has taken us that long to get the deaf, dumb, and blind black men in the wilderness of North America to wake up and understand who they are.
Malcolm X
Image
The white man is going to keep you integration-minded Negroes cooped up here in America, and when you discover that the white man is a trickster, a devil, that he has no intentions of integrating, then you Negroes will run wild.
Malcolm X
Image
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.
Malcolm X
Image
You know, if ever there was a people who should know how to practice brotherhood, it is the American Negro and it is the people of Egypt.
Malcolm X
Image
Give us some separate territory in this country where our people can go and do something for ourselves. And provide us with everything that we need to keep that new territory going, until we are self-sufficient.
Malcolm X
Image
[Negro] should realize that he is living in a war zone, and he is at war with an enemy that is as vicious and criminal and inhuman as any war-making country has ever been.
Malcolm X
Image
Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you're a man, you take it.
Malcolm X
Image
The problem [ of the twenty-two million Afro-Americans] is so broad that it's going to take the inner working of all organizations.
Malcolm X