Malcolm X cytaty

strona 4

„Ameryka musi zrozumieć islam, ponieważ jest to jedyna religia, która usuwa ze społeczeństwa problem rasowy.”

„Nie ma kapitalizmu bez rasizmu.”

„Wierzę, że nastąpi starcie między Wschodem i Zachodem. Wierzę, że nastąpi starcie między tymi, którzy łakną wolności, sprawiedliwości i równości, a tymi, którzy chcą utrzymać istnienie systemów eksploatacji. Wierzę, że nastąpi takie starcie, ale nie uważam, żeby miało ono być oparte na kolorze skóry.”

„Nie daj sobie wmówić, że nie masz szans!”

„Kapitalizm nie może przeżyć, przede wszystkim dlatego, że ustrój kapitalistyczny musi zawsze ssać jakąś krew. Kapitalizm był orłem, natomiast teraz przypomina raczej sępa. (…) W miarę, jak narody wyzwalają się, kapitalizm ma mniej ofiar, mniej do wysysania, i staje się coraz słabszy. Uważam jego zupełny upadek za jedynie kwestię czasu.”

„Nikt nie może dać ci wolności. Nikt nie może dać ci równości czy sprawiedliwości, czy czego innego. Jeśli jesteś człowiekiem, sam ją sobie weź.”

„Jeśli nie jesteś gotowy umrzeć za wolność, wyrzuć to słowo ze swojego słownika.”

„Ceną wolności jest śmierć.”

„Tak jak są kapłani chrześcijańscy, tak ja jestem kapłanem muzułmańskim. Nie wierzę dziś w walkę na jednym froncie, ale na wszystkich frontach. W istocie jestem „czarnym nacjonalistycznym bojownikiem o wolność.””

„Nie można oddzielić pokoju od wolności. Ponieważ nikt nie będzie spokojny, jeśli nie ma wolności.”

„Prawdziwy islam pokazał mi, że oskarżanie wszystkich białych ludzi jest takim samym błędem, jak oskarżanie wszystkich czarnych.”

„Historia ludzkości dowiodła niejednokrotnie, iż prawdziwym kryterium przywództwa jest duchowość. Ludzi przyciąga duch. Siła to przymus. Miłość rodzi się z ducha. Z siły powstają tylko lęki.”

„Każdy człowiek – człowiekiem. Nie – białym, czarnym, śniadym czy czerwonym.”

„Tak długo, jak wyznajesz filozofię siedzenia, tak długo będziesz miał wzorzec myślowy siedzenia, a jak długo będziesz miał myśli siedzenia, tak długo twoim czynem będzie siedzenie.”

„Teraz jest czas na męczenników i jeśli ja mam zostać męczennikiem, będzie to w sprawie braterstwa. Jest to jedyna rzecz, jaka może uratować ten kraj.”

„Nie wypowiadam się jako demokrata ani republikanin. Wypowiadam się jako ofiara amerykańskiej tak zwanej demokracji. I ja i wy, nie widzieliśmy nigdy demokracji; widzieliśmy obłudę.”

„Przyszłość należy do tych, którzy przygotowują się do niej dziś.”

„Nie można wbić komuś noża w plecy na dziewięć cali, potem wyciągnąć go o sześć cali i nazwać to postępem.”

„W naszej Księdze, Koranie, nie ma niczego, co nauczałoby spokojnie cierpieć. Nasza religia każe nam być inteligentnymi. Bądź spokojny, uprzejmy, przestrzegaj praw, szanuj wszystkich. Ale jeśli ktoś położy na tobie rękę, wyślij go na cmentarz. To jest dobra religia.”

“There is no better than adversity. Every defeat, every heartbreak, every loss, contains its own seed, its own lesson on how to improve your performance next time.”

“I saw all races, all colors, blue eyed blonds to black skinned Africans in true brotherhood! In unity! Living as one! Worshiping as one! No segregationists, no liberals; they would not have known how to interpret the meaning of those words”

“Times change so quickly that if you and I don't keep up with the times, we'll find ourselves with an umbrella in our hand, over our head, when the sun is out. Or we'll find ourselves standing in the rain, with the umbrella inside the door.”

“They cripple the bird's wing, and then condemn it for not flying as fast as they.”

“Read absolutely everything you get your hands on because you'll never know where you'll get an idea from…”

“You can't have capitalism without racism.”

“I imagine that one of the biggest troubles with colleges is there are too many distractions, too much panty-raiding, fraternities, and boola-boola and all of that.”

“Only the mistakes were mine.”

“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.”

“We didn't land on Plymouth Rock. The rock was landed on us.”

“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]”

“Western interests: imperialism, colonialism, exploitation, racism, and other negative -isms.”

“America's greatest crime against the black man was not slavery or lynching, but that he was taught to wear a mask of self-hate and self-doubt.”

“To the same degree that your understanding of and attitude towards Afrika becomes more positive, your understanding of and attitude towards yourself will also becomes more positive…”

“To tell a woman not to talk too much was like telling Jesse James not to carry a gun, or a hen not to cackle.”

“Since I learned the truth in Mecca, my dearest friends have come to include all kinds — some Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, agnostics, and even atheists! I have friends who are called capitalists, Socialists, and Communists! Some of my friends are moderates, conservatives, extremists — some are even Uncle Toms! My friends today are black, brown, red, yellow, and white!”

“Allah has blessed us. He has destroyed twenty-two of our enemies.”

“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.”

“To me the earth's most explosive and pernicious evil is racism, the inability of God's creatures to live as One, especially in the Western world.”

“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.”

“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."”

“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.”

“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.”

“I do believe that there will be a clash between East and West. I believe that there will be a clash between those who want freedom, justice and equality for everyone and those who want to continue the systems of exploitation. I believe that there will be that kind of clash, but I don't think that it will be based upon the color of the skin….”

“If I take the wages of everyone here, individually it means nothing, but collectively all of the earning power or wages that you earned in one week would make me wealthy. And if I could collect it for a year, I'd be rich beyond dreams. Now, when you see this, and then you stop and consider the wages that were kept back from millions of Black people, not for one year but for 310 years, you'll see how this country got so rich so fast. And what made the economy as strong as it is today. And all that slave labor that was amassed in unpaid wages, is due someone today. And you're not giving us anything when we say that it's time to collect.”

“I’m not here to argue or discuss anything that we differ about, because it’s time for us to submerge our differences and realize that it is best for us to first see that we have the same problem, a common problem, a problem that will make you catch hell whether you’re a Baptist, or a Methodist, or a Muslim, or a nationalist. Whether you’re educated or illiterate, whether you live on the boulevard or in the alley, you’re going to catch hell just like I am. We’re all in the same boat and we all are going to catch the same hell from the same man. He just happens to be a white man. All of us have suffered here, in this country, political oppression at the hands of the white man, economic exploitation at the hands of the white man, and social degradation at the hands of the white man.”

“If it doesn't take senators and congressmen and presidential proclamations to give freedom to the white man, it is not necessary for legislation or proclamation or Supreme Court decisions to give freedom to the Black man. You let that white man know, if this is a country of freedom, let it be a country of freedom; and if it's not a country of freedom, change it.”

“This is to warn you that I am no longer held in check from fighting white supremacists by Elijah Muhammad's separatist Black Muslim movement, and that if your present racist agitation against our people there in Alabama causes physical harm to Reverend King or any other black Americans who are only attempting to enjoy their rights as free human beings, that you and your Ku Klux Klan friends will be met with maximum physical retaliation from those of us who are not hand-cuffed by the disarming philosophy of nonviolence, and who believe in asserting our right of self-defense — by any means necessary.”

“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.”