“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.”

— Malcolm X , book The Autobiography of Malcolm X

Source: The Autobiography of Malcolm X

Last update Sept. 27, 2023. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "In fact, once he is motivated no one can change more completely than the man who has been at the bottom. I call myself …" by Malcolm X?

Malcolm X 180

American human rights activist 1925–1965

Related quotes

“No man has ever been entirely and completely himself. Yet each one strives to become that — one in an awkward, the other in a more intelligent way, each as best he can.”

Hermann Hesse book Demian

Source: Demian (1919), p. 9 Prologue
Context: I do not consider myself less ignorant than most people. I have been and still am a seeker, but I have ceased to question stars and books; I have begun to listen to the teachings my blood whispers to me. My story is not a pleasant one; it is neither sweet nor harmonious, as invented stories are; it has the taste of nonsense and chaos, of madness and dreams — like the lives of all men who stop deceiving themselves.
Each man's life represents the road toward himself, and attempt at such a road, the intimation of a path. No man has ever been entirely and completely himself. Yet each one strives to become that — one in an awkward, the other in a more intelligent way, each as best he can.

“No one is more truly helpless, more completely a victim, than he who can neither choose nor change nor escape his protectors.”

John Holt book Escape from Childhood

Escape from Childhood (1974).

“What the common man calls Evil, he once told me, is nothing more than the fear of one’s own potential.”

Michael Swanwick book Jack Faust

Source: Jack Faust (1997), Chapter 16, “The Wild Hunt” (p. 278)

“… there occurred to me the simple epitaph which, when I am no more, I intend to have inscribed on my tombstone. It was this:
"He was a man who acted from the best motives. There is one born every minute.”

P.G. Wodehouse book My Man Jeeves

Source: My Man Jeeves

“I ask myself why I have actually survived once more and been called back to life.”

Richard Strauss (1864–1949) German composer and orchestra director

In late fall of 1948, Willi Schuh visited Strauss after an operation at a Clinic in Lausanne. This was a comment made by Strauss. From It will be alright on the night: Richard Streauss through quotes and anecdotes. Ed Alexander Witeschnick, Neff Press, Vienna (1983), page 187.
Other sources