Malcolm X Quotes

I think that the problem of the American negro goes beyond the principle of any organization whether it's a religious, political, or otherwise.

Of course, our failures are a consequence of many factors, but possibly one of the most important is the fact that society operates on the theory that specialization is the key to success, not realizing that specialization precludes comprehensive thinking.

Never let yourself be diverted, either by what you wish to believe, or what you think could have beneficent social effects if it were believed; but look only and solely at what are the facts.

I think that being liberal, in the true sense, is being nondoctrinaire, nondogmatic, noncomitted to a cause but examining each case on its merits. Being left of center is another thing; it's a political position. I think most newspapermen by definition have to be liberal; if they're not liberal, by my definition of it, then they can hardly be good newspapermen.

If you just think exclusively about what would be the best tasting or the most profitable, you're just not seeing the big picture.

If anybody thinks they should listen to me because I'm a professor at MIT, that's nonsense. You should decide whether something makes sense by its content, not by the letters after the name of the person who says it.

Dualistic thinking is a sickness.

If you think one piece of creation is better than another, you have completely lost it.

Whenever people are certain they understand our peculiar situation here on this planet, it is because they have accepted a religious Faith or a secular Ideology (Ideologies are the modern form of Faiths) and just stopped thinking.

Hope is easy; knowledge is hard. Science is the one domain in which we human beings make a truly heroic effort to counter our innate biases and wishful thinking. Science is the one endeavor in which we have developed a refined methodology for separating what a person hopes is true from what he has good reason to believe.

God is a gross answer, an indelicacy against us thinkers- at bottom merely a gross prohibition for us: you shall not think!

[Women] tend to collect more pieces of data when they think, put them into more complex patterns, see more options and outcomes. They tend to be contextual, holistic thinkers.

I don't want to tell people what to think. I'm the least qualified person in the world for that. If I'd go around pretending to be the expert on everything, I'd become Dan Brown, and I don't understand that. We all do our research if we're good writers, and we all work hard to get it right, but that doesn't mean we're experts in the field. The best we can do is challenge people to learn the facts themselves.

A thinking that approaches it objects openly, rigorously ... is also free toward its objects in the sense that it refuses to have rules prescribed to it by organized knowledge. It ... rends the veil with which society conceals them, and perceives them anew.

All I would ask you to be thinking of is the truth and not Socrates.

But anyone who thinks themselves genuinely unbiased is bound to be taken in.

First, what does truth require? It requires us to face the facts as they are, not to involve ourselves in self-deception; to refuse to think merely in slogans. If we are to work for the future of the city, let us deal with the realities as they actually are, not as they might have been, and not as we wish they were.

There are two things you need if you are to uncover and communicate what is really happening in the world. One is to free of any dogmatic belief system. The second is not to give a damn what people think and say about you, or, at least, not to let that influence your decisions.

I dream of a world where the truth is what shapes people's politics, rather than politics shaping what people think is true.

I think it's the responsibility of every human being, not just those who wear the identity of poet, activist, voter, religious person... it's the responsibility of every person. Our responsibility is to use our intelligence as clearly and coherently as we possibly can.

Learn to see, listen, and think for yourself.

Critiquing relieves you of the responsibility of doing integrative thinking.

I believe that through its rational evaluation of truth and indifference to personal belief, science transcends religious and political divisions and so does bind us into a greater, more resilient whole.

'What is' is more important than 'what should be.' Too many people are looking at 'what is' from a position of thinking 'what should be'.

I try to deny myself any illusions or delusions, and I think that this perhaps entitles me to try and deny the same to others, at least as long as they refuse to keep their fantasies to themselves.