Great Throughts Treasury

"If violence is wrong in America, violence is wrong abroad. If it is wrong to be violent defending black women and black children and black babies and black men, then it is wrong for America to draft us, and make us violent abroad in defense of her. And if it is right for America to draft us, and teach us how to be violent in defense of her, then it is right for you and me to do whatever is necessary to defend our own people right here in this country."

"If you are in a country that is progressive, the woman is progressive. If you're in a country that reflects the consciousness toward the importance of education, it's because the woman is aware of the importance of education. But in every backward country you'll find the women are backward, and in every country where education is not stressed its because the women don't have education."

"If you stick a knife in my back nine inches and pull it out six inches, there's no progress. If you pull it all the way out that's not progress. Progress is healing the wound that the blow made. And they haven't even pulled the knife out much less heal the wound. They won't even admit the knife is there."

"If you're not ready to die for it, put the word ''freedom'' out of your vocabulary."

"If you have a dog, I must have a dog. If you have a rifle, I must have a rifle. If you have a club, I must have a club. This is equality."

"If you don't stand for something you will fall for anything."

"If you have no critics you'll likely have no success."

"I'm for truth, no matter who tells it. I'm for justice, no matter who it is for or against. I'm a human being, first and foremost, and as such I'm for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole."

"I'm a man who believes that I died 20 years ago. And I live like a man who is dead already. I have no fear whatsoever of anybody or anything."

"Ignorance of each other is what has made unity impossible in the past. Therefore we need enlightenment. We need more light about each other. Light creates understanding, understanding creates love, love creates patience, and patience creates unity. Once we have more knowledge (light) about each other, we will stop condemning each other and a united front will be brought about."

"If you're afraid of black nationalism, you're afraid of revolution. And if you love revolution, you love black nationalism. To understand this, you have to go back to what the young brother here referred to as the house Negro and the field Negro back during slavery. There were two kinds of slaves, the house Negro and the field Negro. The house Negroes ? they lived in the house with master, they dressed pretty good, they ate good because they ate his food ? what he left. They lived in the attic or the basement, but still they lived near the master; and they loved the master more than the master loved himself. They would give their life to save the master's house ? quicker than the master would. If the master said, "We got a good house here," the house Negro would say, "Yeah, we got a good house here." Whenever the master said "we," he said "we." That's how you can tell a house Negro."

"If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing."

"I'm not going to sit at your table and watch you eat, with nothing on my plate, and call myself a diner. 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. Why, if birth made you American, you wouldn't need any legislation; you wouldn't need any amendments to the Constitution; you wouldn't be faced with civil-rights filibustering in Washington, D.C., right now."

"In Asia or the Arab world or in Africa, where the Muslims are, if you find one who says he's white, all he's doing is using an adjective to describe something that is incidental about him... There is nothing else to it. He's just white. But when you get the white man over here in America and he says he's white, he means something else. You can listen to the sound of his voice when he says he's white. He means he's boss."

"I'm the man you think you are.... If you want to know what I'll do, figure out what you'll do. I'll do the same thing--only more of it."

"I'm for truth, no matter who tells it. I'm for justice, no matter who it's for or against. I'm a human being first and foremost, and as such I am for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole."

"In fact, once he is motivated no one can change more completely than the man who has been at the bottom. I call myself the best example of that."

"In all our deeds, the proper value and respect for time determines success or failure."

"I'm sorry to say that the subject I most disliked was mathematics. I have thought about it. I think the reason was that mathematics leaves no room for argument. If you made a mistake, that was all there was to it."

"In the past, yes, I have made sweeping indictments of all white people. I never will be guilty of that again ? as I know now that some white people are truly sincere, that some truly are capable of being brotherly toward a black man. The true Islam has shown me that a blanket indictment of all white people is as wrong as when whites made blanket indictments against blacks."

"Integration will not bring a man back from the grave."

"Islam is my religion, but I believe my religion is my personal business. It governs my personal life, my personal morals. And my religious philosophy is personal between me and the God in whom I believe; just as the religious philosophy of these others is between them and the God in whom they believe. And this is best this way. Were we to come out here discussing religion, we?d have too many differences from the out-start and we could never get together... If we bring up religion, we?ll be in an argument, and the best way to keep away from arguments and differences, as I said earlier, put your religion at home in the closet. Keep it between you and your God. Because if it hasn?t done anything more for you than it has, you need to forget it anyway."

"It doesn't mean that I advocate violence, but at the same time, I am not against using violence in self-defense. I don't call it violence when it's self-defense, I call it intelligence."

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

"It is a time for martyrs now, and if I am to be one, it will be for the cause of brotherhood. That's the only thing that can save this country."

"It is only after slavery and prison that the sweetest appreciation of freedom can come."

"It is no longer adequate to say that we will have revolution by any means necessary; you have to begin to define the means necessary."

"It is impossible for capitalism to survive, primarily because the system of capitalism needs some blood to suck. Capitalism used to be like an eagle, but now it's more like a vulture. It used to be strong enough to go and suck anybody's blood whether they were strong or not. But now it has become more cowardly, like the vulture, and it can only suck the blood of the helpless. As the nations of the world free themselves, the capitalism has less victims, less to suck, and it becomes weaker and weaker. It's only a matter of time in my opinion before it will collapse completely."

"It?s good to keep wide-open ears and listen to what everybody else has to say, but when you come to make a decision, you have to weigh all of what you?ve heard on its own, and place it where it belongs, and come to a decision for yourself; you?ll never regret it. But 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."

"It was the funniest thing, the reaction, and the way that it spread. In prison, where so little breaks the monotonous routine, the smallest thing causes a commotion of talk. It was being mentioned all over the cell block by night that Satan didn't eat pork."

"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."

"It's got to be the ballot or the bullet. The ballot or the bullet. If you're afraid to use an expression like that, you should get back in the cotton patch, you should get back in the alley."

"It takes heart to be a guerrilla warrior because you?re on your own. In conventional warfare you have tanks and a whole lot of other people with you to back you up?planes over your head and all that kind of stuff. But a guerrilla is on his own. All you have is a rifle, some sneakers and a bowl of rice, and that?s all you need?and a lot of heart."

"It?ll be the ballot or it?ll be the bullet. It?ll be liberty or it?ll be death. And if you?re not ready"

"It?s the hinge that squeaks that gets the grease."

"It's hard for anyone intelligent to be nonviolent. Everything in the universe does something when you start playing with his life, except the American Negro. He lays down and says, 'Beat me, daddy.'"

"It's just like when you've got some coffee that's too black, which means it's too strong. What you do? You integrate it with cream; you make it weak. If you pour too much cream in, you won't even know you ever had coffee. It used to be hot, it becomes cool. It used to be strong, it becomes weak. It used to wake you up, now it'll put you to sleep. This is what they did with the march on Washington. They joined it. They didn't integrate it; they infiltrated it. They joined it, became a part of it, took it over. And as they took it over, it lost its militancy. They ceased to be angry. They ceased to be hot. They ceased to be uncompromising. Why, it even ceased to be a march. It became a picnic, a circus. Nothing but a circus, with clowns and all. You had one right here in Detroit ? I saw it on television ? with clowns leading it, white clowns and black clowns. I know you don?t like what I'm saying, but I?m going to tell you anyway. 'Cause I can prove what I'm saying. If you think I'm telling you wrong, you bring me Martin Luther King and A. Philip Randolph and James Farmer and those other three, and see if they'll deny it over a microphone."

"I've been in down in the bottom of American society, and when guided to God and to Islam, changed the course of my life."

"I've never seen a sincere white man, not when it comes to helping black people. Usually things like this are done by white people to benefit themselves. The white man's primary interest is not to elevate the thinking of black people, or to waken black people, or white people either. The white man is interested in the black man only to the extent that the black man is of use to him. The white man's interest is to make money, to exploit."

"It's the ballot or the bullet. It's liberty or its death. It's freedom for everybody or freedom for nobody."

"Last but not least, I must say this concerning the great controversy over rifles and shotguns. The only thing that I?ve ever said is that in areas where the government has proven itself either unwilling or unable to defend the lives and the property of Negroes, it?s time for Negroes to defend themselves. Article number two of the constitutional amendments provides you and me the right to own a rifle or a shotgun. It is constitutionally legal to own a shotgun or a rifle. This doesn?t mean you?re going to get a rifle and form battalions and go out looking for white folks, although you?d be within your rights?I mean, you?d be justified; but that would be illegal and we don?t do anything illegal. If the white man doesn?t want the black man buying rifles and shotguns, then let the government do its job. [...] If he?s not going to do his job in running the government and providing you and me with the protection that our taxes are supposed to be for, since he spends all those billions for his defense budget, he certainly can?t begrudge you and me spending $12 or $15 for a single-shot, or double-action. I hope you understand. Don?t go out shooting people, but any time?brothers and sisters, and especially the men in this audience; some of you wearing Congressional Medals of Honor, with shoulders this wide, chests this big, muscles that big?any time you and I sit around and read where they bomb a church and murder in cold blood, not some grownups, but four little girls while they were praying to the same God the white man taught them to pray to, and you and I see the government go down and can?t find who did it."

"Looking back, I think I really was at least slightly out of my mind. I viewed narcotics as most people regard food. I wore my guns as today I wear my neckties. Deep down, I actually believed that after living as fully as humanly possible, one should then die violently. I expected then, as I still expect today, to die at any time. But then, I think I deliberately invited death in many, sometimes insane, ways."

"I've had enough of someone else's propaganda. I'm for truth, no matter who tells it. I'm for justice, no matter who it's for or against. I'm a human being first and foremost, and as such I am for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole."

"Lyndon B. Johnson is the head of the Democratic Party. If he?s for civil rights, let him go into the Senate next week and declare himself. Let him go in there right now and declare himself. Let him go in there and denounce the Southern branch of his party. Let him go in there right now and take a moral stand?right now, not later. Tell him don?t wait until election time. If he waits too long, brothers and sisters, he will be responsible for letting a condition develop in this country which will create a climate that will bring seeds up out of the ground with vegetation on the end of them looking like something these people never dreamed of. In 1964, it?s the ballot or the bullet."

"Learn to see, listen, and think for yourself."

"Let's cool it brothers. [Spoken to his assassins, 3 men who shot him 16 times]"

"My alma mater was books, a good library - I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity"

"My family was so poor we were close to eating the holes inside of doughnuts."

"My father didn't know his real name. My father got his name from his grandfather and he got his name from his grandfather and he got it from the slave master."

"My feeling about in-laws was that they were outlaws."