Usually when people are sad, they don't do anything. They just cry over their condition. But when they get angry, they bring about a change.
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You can't separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom.
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Old age is not for sissies.
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My thinking had been opened up wide in Mecca. I wrote long letters to my friends, in which I tried to convey to them my new insights into the American black man’s struggle and his problems as well as the depths of my search for truth and justice. “I’ve had enough of someone else’s propaganda,” I had written to these friends. “I am for truth, no matter who tells it. I am for justice, no matter who it is for or against. I am a human being first and foremost, and as such I’m for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.” The American white man’s press called me the angriest Negro in America. I wouldn’t deny that charge; I spoke exactly as I felt. I believe in anger. I believe it is a crime for anyone who is being brutalized to continue to accept that brutality without doing something to defend himself. I am for violence if non-violence means that we continue postponing or even delaying a solution to the American black man’s problem. White man hates to hear anybody, especially a black man, talk about the crime that the white man perpetrated on the black man. But let me remind you that when the white man came into this country, he certainly wasn’t demonstrating non-violence.
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Yes, I have cherished my 'demagogue' role. I know that societies often have killed the people who have helped to change those societies. And if I can die having bought any light, having exposed any meaningful truth that will help to destroy the racist cancer that is maligant in the body of America - then, all of the credit is due to Allah. Only the mistakes have been mine.
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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.
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We are not sure if this was a family feud or what. The police are investigating.
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Y'all got on this boat for different reasons, but y'all come to the same place. So now I'm asking more of you than I have before. Maybe all. Sure as I know anything, I know this - they will try again. Maybe on another world, maybe on this very ground swept clean. A year from now, ten? They'll swing back to the belief that they can make people... better. And I do not hold to that. So no more runnin'. I aim to misbehave.
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It's just like when you've got some coffee that's too black, which means it's too strong. What do you do? You integrate it with cream, you make it weak. But if you pour too much cream in it, 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 puts you to sleep.
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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.
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Without education, you're not going anywhere in this world.
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There is no better adversity. Every defeat. Every heart break. Every loss. Contains its own seed, it's own lesson on how to improve your performance the next time.
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I'm for truth, no matter who tells it. I'm for justice, no matter who it's for or against.
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You're not supposed to be so blind with patriotism that you can't face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who says it.
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A man only curses because he doesn't know the words to express what is on his mind
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If a man like Malcolm X could change and repudiate racism, if I myself and other former Muslims can change, if young whites can change, then there is hope for America.
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Only the old are innocent. That is what the Victorians understood, and the Christians. Original sin is a property of the young. The old grow beyond corruption very quickly.
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I have no mercy or compassion for a society that crushes people, and then penalizes them for not being able to stand up under the weight.
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Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you're a man, you take it.
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Power in defense of freedom is greater than power on behalf of tyranny and oppression.
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My alma mater was books, a good library. I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity.
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You're not to be so blind with patriotism that you can't face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or says it.
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The dominant and most deep-dyed trait of the journalist is his timorousness. Where the novelist fearlessly plunges into the water of self-exposure, the journalist stands trembling on the shore in his beach robe. The journalist confines himself to the clean, gentlemanly work of exposing the grieves and shames of others.
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The orgasm has replaced the cross as the focus of longing and fulfillment.
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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.
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When a person places the proper value on freedom, there is nothing under the sun that he will not do to acquire that freedom. Whenever you hear a man saying he wants freedom, but in the next breath he is going to tell you what he won't do to get it, or what he doesn't believe in doing in order to get it, he doesn't believe in freedom. A man who believes in freedom will do anything under the sun to acquire... or preserve his freedom.
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You can always chase a dream but it will not count if you never catch it.
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Few men of action have been able to make a graceful exit at the appropriate time.
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The only way we'll get freedom for ourselves is to identify ourselves with every oppressed people in the world. We are blood brothers to the people of Brazil, Venezuela, Haiti, Cuba -- yes Cuba too.
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Time is on the side of the oppressed today, it's against the oppressor. Truth is on the side of the oppressed today, it's against the oppressor. You don't need anything else.
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