
Variant: Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you're a man, you take it.
Source: Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements
Source: Malcolm X Speaks (1965), p. 111
Plunkitt of Tammany Hall, Chapter 3, The Curse of Civil Service Reform
Variant: Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you're a man, you take it.
Source: Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements
Source: Malcolm X Speaks (1965), p. 111
“When mauma saw my raw eyes, she said, “Ain’t nobody can write down in a book what you worth.”
Source: The Invention of Wings
“I ain’t scared of Beethoven or nobody when it comes to composing.”
As quoted on Silvert, Conrad, “Joe Zawinul: Wayfaring Genius–Part II,” Down Beat, Jun. 15, 1978, pp. 20-22
“Some day I'm gonna call me up on the phone, so when I answer, I can tell myself to shut up.”
“If you can not answer a man's argument, all is not lost; you can still call him vile names.”
The trial of Charles B. Reynolds for blasphemy (1887)
Context: the defendant had the right to say every word with which he is charged in this indictment. He had the right to give his honest thought, no matter whether any human being agreed with what he said or not, and no matter whether any other man approved of the manner in which he said these things. I defend his right to speak, whether I believe in what he spoke or not, or in the propriety of saying what he did. I should defend a man just as cheerfully who had spoken against my doctrine, as one who had spoken against the popular superstitions of my time. It would make no difference to me how unjust the attack was upon my belief -- how maliciously ingenious; and no matter how sacred the conviction that was attacked, I would defend the freedom of speech. And why? Because no attack can be answered by force, no argument can be refuted by a blow, or by imprisonment, or by fine. You may imprison the man, but the argument is free; you may fell the man to the earth, but the statement stands.
Source: How to Become President (1940), Ch. 1 : Government jobs pay big money
Context: Who am I to talk? That’s a fair question, and one which deserves a better answer than I can give you. … Come to think of it, who are you? Whoever you are, I sympathize with you. I sympathize with everybody; that’s what I get for being a candidate myself. Let them call us nonentities. Who cares? A nonenitiy can be just as famous as anybody else if enough people know about him.
But let’s leave personalities out of this and just talk about me.
“You can tell you’ve found a really interesting question when nobody wants you to answer it.”
Source: Nemesis Games (2015), Chapter 8 (p. 92)
“Give no answer to contentious arguments or irresponsible accusations.”
Source: Principle-Centered Leadership (1992), Ch. 11
Context: Give no answer to contentious arguments or irresponsible accusations. Let such things "fly out open windows" until they spend themselves.