Human Rights Activist Quotes

I'm for truth, no matter who tells it.

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.

To say it is not practical, one has to also admit that integration is not practical.

Its the hinge that squeaks that gets the grease

After you get your freedom, your enemy will respect you.

Any time you know you're within the law, within your legal rights, within your moral rights, in accord with justice, then die for what you believe in. But don't die alone. Let your dying be reciprocal. This is what is meant by equality. What's good for the goose is good for the gander.

I think there are plenty of good people in America, but there are also plenty of bad people in America and the bad ones are the ones who seem to have all the power and be in these positions to block things that you and I need.

If you're born in America with a black skin, you're born in prison, and the masses of black people in America today are beginning to regard our plight or predicament in this society as one of a prison inmate.

All of us were mischievous at some time or another, I more so than any of the rest. [My brother] Philbert and I kept a battle going. ... Even in our fighting, there was a feeling of brotherly union.

Of all our studies, it is history that is best qualified to reward our research.

America is such a paradoxical society, hypocritically paradoxical, that if you don't have some humor, you'll crack up.

When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, the United States struck back. She didn't go and bomb - she bombed any part of Japan. She dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. Those people in Hiroshima probably hadn't even, some of them; most of them hadn't even killed anybody.

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.

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

One of the first things I think young people, especially nowadays, should learn is how to see for yourself and listen for yourself and think for yourself. Then you can come to an intelligent decision for yourself. If you form the habit of going by what you hear others say about someone, or going by what others think about someone, instead of searching that thing out for yourself and seeing for yourself, you will be walking west when you think you're going east, and you will be walking east when you think you're going west.

During the past eleven days here in the Muslim world, I have eaten from the same plate, drunk from the same glass, and slept on the same rug - while praying to the same God - with fellow Muslims, whose eyes were the bluest of blue, whose hair was the blondest of blond, and whose skin was the whitest of white. And in the words and in the deeds of the white Muslims, I felt the same sincerity that I felt among the black African Muslims of Nigeria, Sudan and Ghana.

I can't turn around without hearing about some 'civil rights advance's White people seem to think the black man ought to be shouting 'hallelujah's Four hundred years the white man has had his foot-long knife in the black man's back — and now the white man starts to wiggle the knife out, maybe six inches! The black man's supposed to be grateful? Why, if the white man jerked the knife out, it's still going to leave a scar!

X is not my real name. But if you study history, you'll find why no Black man in the Western Hemisphere knows his real name. Some of his ancestors kidnapped our ancestors from Africa and took us into the Western Hemisphere and sold us there, and our names were stripped from us and so today we don't know who we really are. I am one of those who admit it, and so I just put X up there to keep from wearing his name.

We won't organize any black man to be a Democrat or a Republican because both of them have sold us out. Both of them have sold us out; both parties have sold us out. Both parties are racist, and the Democratic Party is more racist than the Republican Party.

... the young people are the ones who most quickly identify with the struggle and the necessity to eliminate the evil conditions that exist.

A revolution is bloody, but America is in a unique position. She's the only country in history in a position actually to become involved in a bloodless revolution. The Russian revolution was bloody, Chinese revolution was bloody, French revolution was bloody, Cuban revolution was bloody, and there was nothing more bloody then the American Revolution. But today this country can become involved in a revolution that won't take bloodshed. All she's got to do is give the black man in this country everything that's due him, everything.

Our people have made the mistake of confusing the methods with the objectives. As long as we agree on objectives, we should never fall out with each other just because we believe in different methods, or tactics, or strategy. We have to keep in mind at all times that we are not fighting for separation. We are fighting for recognition as free humans in this society.

You don't do anything to further your stay aboard a ship that you see is going to go down to the bottom of the ocean.

Revolution is based on land. Land is the basis of all independence. Land is the basis of freedom, justice, and equality.

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.

A race of people is like and individual man; until it uses its own talent, takes pride in its own history, expresses its own culture, affirms its own selfhood, it can never fulfill itself.

It isn't the American white man who is a racist, but it's the American political, economic and social atmosphere that automatically nourishes a racist psychology in the white man.

Learn to see, listen, and think for yourself.

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.

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

If violence is wrong in America, violence is wrong abroad. If it is wrong to be violent defending black women and black children and black babies and black men, then it is wrong for America to draft us and make us violent abroad in defense of her. And if it is right for America to draft us, and teach us how to be violent in defense of her, then it is right for you and me to do whatever is necessary to defend our own people right here in this country.

Once you change your philosophy, you change your thought pattern. Once you change your thought pattern, you change your attitude. Once you change your attitude, it changes your behavior pattern and then you go on into some action. As long as you gotta sit-down philosophy, you’ll have a sit-down thought pattern, and as long as you think that old sit-down thought you’ll be in some kind of sit-down action.

The future belongs to those who prepare for it today.

What does a black man look like begging for a cup of coffee in a white restaurant, and doesn't have a job to back up his - to pay for it when, when - when he does get the coffee? It's putting the cart before the horse.

The real names of our people were destroyed during slavery. The last name of my forefathers was taken from them when they were brought to America and made slaves, and then the name of the slave master was given, which we refuse, we reject that name today and refuse it. I never acknowledge it whatsoever.

The white race is doomed not because it's white but because of its misdeeds.

It is only after slavery and prison that the sweetest appreciation of freedom can come.

You don't have a peaceful revolution. You don't have a turn-the-cheek revolution. There's no such thing as a nonviolent revolution.

The white press itself created civil right leaders.

No sane black man really wants integration! No sane white man really wants integration!

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.

I live like a man who's dead already! I have no fear whatsoever of anybody or anything

As bad as I was, as much trouble and worry as I caused my mother, I loved her.

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

It is not a case of our people...wanting either separation or integration. The use of these words actually clouds the real picture. The 22 million Afro-Americans don't seek either separation or integration. They seek recognition and respect as human beings.

Without education, you are not going anywhere in this world.

Just as a tree without roots is dead, a people without history or cultural roots also becomes a dead people.

A man without any history is like a tree without roots

Our success in America will involve two circles: Black Nationalism and Islam–it will take BN [Black Nationalism] to make our people conscious of doing for self & then Islam will provide the spiritual guidance. BN [Black Nationalism] will link us to Africa and Islam will link us spiritually to Africa, Arabia & Asia.

You can always chase a dream but it will not count if you never catch it.

There is no more apartheid in South Africa than in the United States.

The man was a deceiver. He was deceitful and I will never bite my tongue in saying that. I don't think he was anything but a politician, and he used Negroes to get elected and to get votes.

Culture is an indispensable weapon in the freedom struggle.

In the past, yes, I have made sweeping indictments of all white people. I never will be guilty of that again - as I know now that some white people are truly sincere, that some truly are capable of being brotherly toward a black man. The true Islam has shown me that a blanket indictment of all white people is as wrong as when whites made blanket indictments against blacks.

Anytime anyone is enslaved or in any way deprived of his liberty, that person, as a human being, as far as I'm concerned he is justified to resort to whatever methods necessary to bring about his liberty again.

One day, may we all meet together in the light of understanding.

We're primarily interested in solving the problem of 20 million black people. And if integration is going to solve the problem tomorrow, then let's integrate. But since the Supreme Court issued its desegregation decision seven years ago, and you only have about six or seven percent integration now, on an educational level, that means that the black man trying to use integration as a means of solving his problem will be another 100 years just getting integration on an educational level.

The other slaves in the field never let that house slave knew - know what they were really thinking. If the house slave said, well one of these days all of us will live in the plantation, they said, uh huh. They went along with him. But if you came up to them and said, let's go, they would be gone just like that.And in, in America you have the same situation.You have the vast masses who are still slaves.

Truth is on the side of the oppressed.

A Negro just can't be whipped by somebody white and return with his head up in the neighborhood, especially in those days, when sports and, to a lesser extent show business, were the only fields open to Negroes, and when the ring was the only place a Negro could whip a white man and not be lynched.