The Autobiography of Malcolm X

by Malcolm X

He believed, as did Marcus Garvey, that freedom, independence and self-respect could never be achieved by the Negro in America, and that therefore the Negro should leave America to the white man and return to his African land of origin.

It has always been my belief that I, too, will die by violence. I have done all that I can to be prepared.

So early in life, I had learned that if you want something, you had better make some noise.

Whites have always hidden or justified all of the guilts they could by ridiculing or blaming Negroes.

All I had done was to improve on their strategy, and it was the beginning of a very important lesson in life—that anytime you find someone more successful than you are, especially when you’re both engaged in the same business—you know they’re doing something that you aren’t.

Hence I have no mercy or compassion in me for a society that will crush people, and then penalize them for not being able to stand up under the weight.

We were in that world of Negroes who are both servants and psychologists, aware that white people are so obsessed with their own importance that they will pay liberally, even dearly, for the impression of being catered to and entertained.

All women, by their nature, are fragile and weak: they are attracted to the male in whom they see strength.

I told Reginald what I had learned: that in order to get something you had to look as though you already had something.

Any person who claims to have deep feeling for other human beings should think a long, long time before he votes to have other men kept behind bars—caged. I am not saying there shouldn’t be prisons, but there shouldn’t be bars. Behind bars, a man never reforms. He will never forget. He never will get completely over the memory of the bars.

I was going through the hardest thing, also the greatest thing, for any human being to do; to accept that which is already within you, and around you.

Not long ago, an English writer telephoned me from London, asking questions. One was, “What’s your alma mater?” I told him, “Books.” You will never catch me with a free fifteen minutes in which I’m not studying something I feel might be able to help the black man.