Great Throughts Treasury

"Any time Uncle Sam, with all his machinery for warfare, is held to a draw by some rice eaters, he?s lost the battle. He had to sign a truce. America?s not supposed to sign a truce. She?s supposed to be bad. But she?s not bad any more. She?s bad as long as she can use her hydrogen bomb, but she can?t use hers for fear Russia might use hers. Russia can?t use hers, for fear that Sam might use his. So, both of them are weapon-less. They can?t use the weapon because each?s weapon nullifies the other?s. So the only place where action can take place is on the ground. And the white man can?t win another war fighting on the ground. Those days are over. The black man knows it, the brown man knows it, the red man knows it, and the yellow man knows it. So they engage him in guerrilla warfare. That?s not his style. You?ve got to have heart to be a guerrilla warrior, and he hasn?t got any heart."

"Anytime you beg another man to set you free, you will never be free. Freedom is something that you have to do for yourself."

"Anything I do today, I regard as urgent."

"Armed with the knowledge of our past, we can with confidence charter a course for our future. Culture is an indispensable weapon in the freedom struggle. We must take hold of it and forge the future with the past."

"As I say, if we bring up religion we?ll have differences; we?ll have arguments; and we?ll never be able to get together."

"Anytime you have to rely upon your enemy for a job you're in bad shape."

"As long as you are convinced you have never done anything, you can never do anything."

"Be peaceful, be courteous, obey the law, respect everyone; but if someone puts his hand on you, send him to the cemetery."

"Because the full story is the best way that I know to have it seen, and understood, that I had sunk to the very bottom of the American white man's society when-soon now, in prison-I found Allah and the religion of Islam and it completely transformed my life."

"Birth must be reviewed. All of our experiences fuse into our personality. Everything that ever happened to us is an ingredient."

"Betty's a good Muslim woman and wife. I don't imagine many other women might put up with the way I am. Awakening this brainwashed black man and telling this arrogant, devilish white man the truth about himself, Betty understands, is a full-time job"

"Books? The Loom of Language."

"Brothers and sisters, friends and enemies: I just can't believe that everyone in here is a friend and I don't want to leave anybody out."

"But it does make the black people in this country who are jobless and unemployed and standing in the welfare line very much discouraged to see a government that can't solve our problem, can't provide job opportunities for us, and at the sometime not only Cubans but Hungarians and every other type of white refugee imaginable can come to this country and get everything this government has to offer."

"But people are always speculating-why am I as I am? To understand that of any person, his whole life, from birth, must be reviewed. All of our experiences fuse into our personality. Everything that ever happened to us is an ingredient."

"Black people are fed up with the dillydallying, pussyfooting, compromising approach that we?ve been using toward getting our freedom. We want freedom now, but we?re not going to get it saying ?We Shall Overcome.? We?ve got to fight until we overcome."

"By any means necessary."

"Chickens coming home to roost never did make me sad; they've always made me glad."

"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."

"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.? With these choices, I felt that the American black man only needed to choose, which one to be eaten by, the ?liberal? fox or the ?conservative? wolf ? because both of them would eat him. [At least] in a wolf?s den, I?d always known exactly where I stood; I?d watch the dangerous wolf closer than I would the smooth, sly fox. The wolf?s very growling would keep me alert and fighting him to survive, whereas I might be lulled and fooled by the tricky fox."

"By making our people in the Western Hemisphere hate Africa, we ended up hating ourselves. We hated our African characteristics. We hated our African identity. We hated our African features. So much so that you would find those of us in the West who would hate the shape of our nose. We would hate the shape of our lips. We would hate the color of our skin and the texture of our hair. This was a reaction, but we didn?t realize that it was a reaction."

"Did the Zionists have the legal or moral right to invade Arab Palestine, uproot its Arab citizens from their homes and seize all Arab property for themselves just based on the "religious" claim that their forefathers lived there thousands of years ago? Only a thousand years ago the Moors lived in Spain. Would this give the Moors of today the legal and moral right to invade the Iberian Peninsula, drive out its Spanish citizens, and then set up a new Moroccan nation... where Spain used to be, as the European Zionists have done to our Arab brothers and sisters in Palestine?"

"Despite my firm convictions, I have always been a man who tries to face facts, and to accept the reality of life as new experience and new knowledge unfolds. I have always kept an open mind, a flexibility that must go hand in hand with every form of the intelligent search for truth."

"Don?t change the white man?s mind?you can?t change his mind, and that whole thing about appealing to the moral conscience of America?America?s conscience is bankrupt. She lost all conscience a long time ago. Uncle Sam has no conscience. They don?t know what morals are. They don?t try and eliminate an evil because it?s evil, or because it?s illegal, or because it?s immoral; they eliminate it only when it threatens their existence. So you?re wasting your time appealing to the moral conscience of a bankrupt man like Uncle Sam. If he had a conscience, he?d straighten this thing out with no more pressure being put upon him. So it is not necessary to change the white man?s mind."

"Don't be bitter. Remember Lot's wife when they kill me, and they surely will. You have to use all of your energy to do what it is you have to do. [To his wife Betty Shabazz]"

"Don't condemn if you see a person has a dirty glass of water, just show them the clean glass of water that you have. When they inspect it, you won't have to say that yours is better."

"Don't be in a hurry to condemn because he doesn't do what you do or think as you think or as fast. There was a time when you didn't know what you know today."

"Early in life I had learned that if you want something, you had better make some noise"

"Dr. King wants the same thing I want. Freedom."

"Either you are a citizen or you are not a citizen at all. If you are citizen, you are free; if you're not a citizen you are a slave."

"Every morning when I wake up, now, I regard it as having another borrowed day."

"Education is an important element in the struggle for human rights. It is the means to help our children and our people rediscover their identity and thereby increase their self-respect. Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs only to the people who prepare for it today."

"For the white man to ask the black man if he hates him is just like the rapist asking the raped, or the wolf asking the sheep, ?Do you hate me?? The white man is in no moral position to accuse anyone else of hate! Why, when all of my ancestors are snake-bitten, and I?m snake-bitten, and I warn my children to avoid snakes, what does that snake sound like accusing me of hate-teaching?"

"He said, one time, that no true leader burdened his followers with a greater load than they could carry, and no true leader sets too fast a pace for his follows to keep up."

"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."

"Here was one of the white man?s most characteristic behavior patterns ? where black men are concerned. He loves himself so much that he is startled if he discovers that his victims don?t share his vainglorious self-opinion."

"Historically, revolutions are bloody. Oh, yes, they are. They haven?t never had a bloodless revolution, or a nonviolent revolution. That don?t happen even in Hollywood. You don?t have a revolution in which you love your enemy, and you don?t have a revolution in which you are begging the system of exploitation to integrate you into it. Revolutions overturn systems. Revolutions destroy systems."

"How can anyone be against love?"

"History is a people's memory, and without a memory, a man is demoted to the lower animals."

"How can you thank a man for giving you what's already yours? How then can you thank him for giving you only part of what's already yours?"

"I am a Muslim, because it's a religion that teaches you an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. It teaches you to respect everybody, and treat everybody right. But it also teaches you if someone steps on your toe, chop off their foot. And I carry my religious axe with me all the time."

"I am not a racist. I am against every form of racism and segregation, every form of discrimination. I believe in human beings, and that all human beings should be respected as such, regardless of their color."

"I am not educated nor am I an expert in any particular field. But I am sincere and my sincerity is my credentials."

"How is it possible to write one's autobiography in a world so fast-changing as this?"

"I am for violence if non-violence means we continue postponing a solution to the American black man's problem just to avoid violence."

"I believe in human beings, and that all human beings should be respected as such, regardless of their color."

"I believe in recognizing every human being as a human being ? neither white, black, brown, or red; and when you are dealing with humanity as a family there's no question of integration or intermarriage. It's just one human being marrying another human being or one human being living around and with another human being."

"I believe in Islam. I am a Muslim and there is nothing wrong with being a Muslim, nothing wrong with the religion of Islam. It just teaches us to believe in Allah as the God."

"I believe in a religion that believes in freedom. Any time I have to accept a religion that won't let me fight a battle for my people, I say to hell with that religion."

"I believe in the brotherhood of man, all men, but I don't believe in brotherhood with anybody who doesn't want brotherhood with me. I believe in treating people right, but I'm not going to waste my time trying to treat somebody right who doesn't know how to return the treatment? Brotherhood is a two-way street."