The Autobiography of Malcolm X

by Malcolm X

the Negro only tells the white man what he believes the white man wishes to hear, and that the art of dissembling reached a point where even Negroes cannot truthfully say they understand what their fellow Negroes believe.

he was subconsciously so afflicted with the white man’s brainwashing of Negroes that he inclined to favor the light ones,

for being so nice and quiet, often stayed hungry.

if you want something, you had better make some noise.

if you see somebody winning all the time, he isn’t gambling, he’s cheating.

if you see somebody winning all the time, he isn’t gambling, he’s cheating.

Through all of this time of my life, I really was dead—mentally dead. I just didn’t know that I was.

You have been a victim of the evil of the devil white man ever since he murdered and raped and stole you from your native land in the seeds of your forefathers….”

the collective white man had acted like a devil in virtually every contact he had with the world’s

“Do you know why the white man really hates you? It’s because every time he sees your face, he sees a mirror of his crime—and his guilty conscience can’t bear to face it!

both heaven and hell were conditions in which people lived right here on this planet Earth.

one of the white man’s tricks was keeping the black race divided and fighting against each other. Mr. Muhammad said that this had traditionally kept the black people from achieving the unity which was the worst need of the black race in America.

as long as our people here in America are dependent upon the white man, we will always be begging him for jobs, food, clothing, and housing. And he will always control our lives, regulate our lives, and have the power to segregate us.

those few bourgeois Negroes, rushing to throw away their little money in the white man’s luxury hotels, his swanky nightclubs, and big, fine, exclusive restaurants.

My whole life had been a chronology of—changes.

I have always kept an open mind, which is necessary to the flexibility that must go hand in hand with every form of intelligent search for truth.

it isn’t the American white man who is a racist, but it’s the American political, economic, and social atmosphere that automatically nourishes a racist psychology in the white man.”

the only thing the F.B.I, the C.I.A., or anybody else could ever find me guilty of, was being open-minded.

“Conservatism” in America’s politics means “Let’s keep the niggers in their place.” And “liberalism” means “Let’s keep the knee-grows in their place—but tell them we’ll treat them a little better; let’s fool them more, with more promises.”

When I am dead—I say it that way because from the things I know, I do not expect to live long enough to read this book in its finished form—I want you to just watch and see if I’m not right in what I say: that the white man, in his press, is going to identify me with “hate.”