Malcolm X Quotes

Looting is a natural response to the unnatural and inhuman society of commodity abundance. It instantly undermines the commodity as such, and it also exposes what the commodity ultimately implies: the army, the police and the other specialized detachments of the state's monopoly of armed violence.

Rebellions broke out, from the full-scale political revolution of Dorr’s rebellion in Rhode Island to urban violence and protest, often by out of work whites taking out their anger on African Americans or Irish Americans. In response, leaders had to come to terms with the role of force in a democracy.

Civilization is a youth with a molotov cocktail in his hand. Culture is the Soviet tank or L.A. cop that guns him down.

Puppet Papademos is in place, and as Athens caught fire on Sunday night he rather took my breath away - he said violence and destruction have no place in a democratic country.

The coffers are full of money and equipment for the Ferguson Police and the Missouri National Guard to put down a potential uprising, but no money for actually uplifting the people of Ferguson, St. Louis, Missouri and around the nation.

You have to understand the Newark Riots - a lot of people understand that the pain was the initial explosion of anger and alienation, but after that, the response, sending the National Guard troops - a lot of violence was carried out and perpetrated by those who were allegedly coming here to protect residents.

Urban riots must now be recognized as a durable social phenomenon. They are a special form of violence ... mainly intended to shock the white community.

Government violence can only do one thing and that is to breed counter-violence.

The thing that happened in Ferguson touched many of us in a specific way.

The anger that you see expressed out there in Los Angeles, in my district this evening, is a righteous anger, and it's difficult for me to say to the people, "Don't be angry." When people are angry and enraged, they do do senseless things. They do act even sometimes out of character, and that's why it is the responsibility of America to try and avoid putting people in these kinds of situations.

If some black man go out and start something, a riot or something or, I'm not going to jump in it and get killed because he's gone out and started something I don't believe in what he's fighting for or his approach.

The kind of violence, looting, destruction that we saw from a handful of individuals in Baltimore, there's no excuse for that. That's not a statement. That's not politics. That's not activism. That's just criminal behavior.

Listen, 'The Purge' actually exists in some form or another in many places around the world when you think about it.

I have busted more hippies' noses than all the narcs in the free world.

I could see flames from the windows of my chambers. For the next three or four days we had major rioting here in Washington and I stayed at the court day and night.

The city and province were given up to anarchy; the coloured people, elated with victory, proclaimed the slaughter of all whites, except the English, French, and American residents.

The riot isn't seen in the movie, but it is alluded to. He has this one speech that gives a great sense of texture and paints a picture of what was happening in Harlem then.

If America don't come around, we're gonna' burn it down.

We're not going to create a more equal society by not prodding at it, are we?

You show me a highly unequal society, and I will show you a police state. Or an uprising. There are no counterexamples. None. It's not if, it's when.

I have watched Occupy Wall Street mostly from the sidelines.

Riot is the voice of the unheard.

History dictates that unresponsive governments force ordinary people to do extraordinary things.

America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards.

What began as a political protest turned into a class war and a racial pogrom.