Straight from today’s Quotle — here’s who really said it, and the story behind it. Play again

Who really said it

If you aren't careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing

Spoken by Malcolm X 1925–1965 · Minister, Black nationalist leader & founder of the Organization of Afro-American Unity
Verified In copyright

Malcolm X said it at an Organization of Afro-American Unity rally in the Audubon Ballroom, Harlem, on 13 December 1964, while setting up a passage about how the American press covered the Congo. The sentence was printed the following year in Malcolm X Speaks, the collection George Breitman assembled after the assassination, and the circulating wording matches the published transcript almost exactly.

Last verified 6 Aug 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

For presentations

Put it on a slide

Verified quote & credit

“If you aren't careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing” Malcolm X, speech at the Audubon Ballroom, Harlem, 13 December 1964: "If you aren't careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing." First published in Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements, ed. George Breitman (New York: Merit Publishers, 1965), p. 93. Verified via Quotle.info.

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by The estate of Malcolm X, and the book’s publishers — Merit Publishers (now Pathfinder Press) and Grove Press). A short, credited quote is generally fine for talks, teaching, and internal decks; for commercial, published, or large-scale reuse, get permission.

Image direction — grounded in this quote’s real context; paste into your image tool

In context

Evoking the world of Malcolm X — American minister, Black nationalist leader & founder of the Organization of Afro-American Unity. Theme: "If you aren't careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Minimalist

Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "If you aren't careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

The speech

Speech
At the Audubon Ballroom
Delivered
13 December 1964 — OAAU rally, Audubon Ballroom, Harlem, New York
First published in
Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements (Merit Publishers, 1965), ed. George Breitman
Cited at
p. 93, per Wikiquote’s sourced entry

The press is so powerful in its image-making role, it can make a criminal look like he’s the victim and make the victim look like he’s the criminal. … If you aren’t careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing. Abridged — one repeated sentence omitted

Transcript wording. Note “If you aren’t careful” and no comma before “and loving” — the widely shared “If you’re not careful …, and loving …” is a smoothed version of this.

Audio recording
The recorded 13 December 1964 rally at the Malcolm X audio archive
Full transcript of the 13 December 1964 Audubon speech (p. 276)

How we checked it

  • Started with the specialists. Quote Investigator has not taken this one up, so the anchor is Wikiquote’s sourced entry ↗, which gives a speech at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem on 13 December 1964, published in Malcolm X Speaks (1965), ed. George Breitman, p. 93.
  • Checked that against a transcript rather than another quote page. The Missouri S&T–hosted Collected Speeches, Debates & Interviews (1960–1965) ↗ carries the whole speech under the heading “At the Audubon Ballroom (December 13, 1964)”, and the sentence is there word for word on p. 276, inside the Congo passage.
  • Confirmed the occasion independently: Abdul Alkalimat’s Malcolm X audio archive ↗ logs a ~70-minute recording of the 13 December 1964 OAAU rally at the Audubon, with Dick Gregory and Babu also speaking.
  • Ruled out the neighbouring speech. The Audubon address of 20 December 1964, printed in the same book at pp. 115–136 and posted in full by Teaching American History ↗, does not contain the line.
In copyright

Not public domain. The speech was delivered on 13 December 1964 and first published in Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements (Merit Publishers, 1965) — well after the US public-domain cutoff, and the book is still in print from Grove Press ↗. Quoting the sentence with attribution is ordinary fair use; reprinting the speech is not.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

What actually goes wrong with this one

This is not a fake. It is one of the better-documented lines in the Malcolm X corpus — you can name the hall, the date and the page. What goes wrong is everything around the sentence: it circulates with no source at all, its punctuation drifts, and there are two Audubon Ballroom speeches a week apart to confuse the citation.

The quote-aggregator sites no source

BrainyQuote prints the sentence in exactly the published wording — and attaches no speech, no date and no book ↗, only his birth and death years. That is how a genuine, datable quote ends up looking like folklore.

The smoothed ‘If you’re not careful’ version paraphrase

The most-shared form reads “If you’re not careful … being oppressed, and loving …” — that is how Goodreads’ community-added entry ↗ has it. The published transcript reads “If you aren’t careful … being oppressed and loving …”, without the comma. Same meaning, tidied speech.

The 20 December 1964 Audubon speech easy mix-up

Malcolm spoke at the Audubon again a week later, and it is that second speech — Malcolm X Speaks, pp. 115–136 — that is most widely reprinted online ↗. The newspaper line is not in it. It belongs to the 13 December rally.

The line is Malcolm X’s own, spoken at an OAAU rally in the Audubon Ballroom on 13 December 1964 and printed the next year in Malcolm X Speaks — you can read the whole passage in the full transcript ↗.

Context

Why he said it

This was not abstract media theory. Malcolm was warming up an OAAU crowd waiting on a guest speaker, and the subject was the Congo — villages being bombed from American-supplied aircraft flown by anti-Castro Cuban pilots, while the story that gripped the American press was the fate of a few white hostages. The newspaper line is the hinge he swings into that argument: the coverage had inverted who was the criminal and who was the victim.

He then turned it inward, warning the room that the same inversion works on the reader — that a person can be talked into hating himself and admiring the man who is beating him. That is the part the quote’s modern circulation usually drops, and it is the reason the sentence is a warning about the audience rather than a complaint about journalists.

The press is so powerful in its image-making role.

How the sentence got into print

Malcolm X did not publish this himself. Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements was edited by George Breitman, a socialist editor who had been transcribing and preserving the speeches, and it came out in 1965 from Merit Publishers — a small Trotskyist imprint later folded into Pathfinder Press — months after the assassination. Grove Press issued the paperback that keeps it in print today.

One trap for anyone chasing the citation: the book contains two Audubon Ballroom speeches from December 1964, a week apart. The newspaper passage is in the 13 December one. The 20 December speech, widely reprinted online, is a different text.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Truth Power Justice

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Malcolm X on Wikiquoteen.wikiquote.org

Carries the sentence with a full source note: Audubon Ballroom, 13 December 1964, later published in Malcolm X Speaks (1965), ed. George Breitman, p. 93.
Collected Speeches, Debates & Interviews (1960–1965)web.mst.edu

Missouri S&T–hosted compilation containing the whole 13 December 1964 Audubon speech; the sentence appears verbatim on its p. 276.
Malcolm X audio archive — 13 Dec 1964 OAAU rallyalkalimat.org

Abdul Alkalimat’s Malcolm X archive page for the recording of this rally (~70 minutes, in three segments), with Dick Gregory and Babu also on the bill.
‘At the Audubon’ — 20 December 1964teachingamericanhistory.org

Full text of the OTHER Audubon speech, from a week later (Malcolm X Speaks, pp. 115–136). Useful for ruling it out — the newspaper line is not in it.
Malcolm X Speaks (Grove Press edition)groveatlantic.com

The publisher’s page for the in-print edition edited by George Breitman, with an introduction by Ibram X. Kendi — confirms the book is still under active copyright.
Ibram X. Kendi on George Breitmanlithub.com

Essay documenting the book’s publication history: 1965, Merit Publishers, months after Malcolm’s death, later Pathfinder and Grove.

The author

About Malcolm X

Malcolm X

1925–1965 · American minister, Black nationalist leader & founder of the Organization of Afro-American Unity

Born Malcolm Little in Omaha, Nebraska on 19 May 1925, he became the Nation of Islam’s most visible minister and national spokesman before publicly breaking with the organisation in March 1964. In the last year of his life he made the hajj, took the name El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, and founded the secular, Pan-Africanist Organization of Afro-American Unity, whose Harlem rallies gave him a platform independent of the Nation. He was assassinated on 21 February 1965 — on the stage of the same Audubon Ballroom where he spoke these words ten weeks earlier.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Chicago

Malcolm X, speech at the Audubon Ballroom, Harlem, New York, December 13, 1964, in Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements, ed. George Breitman (New York: Merit Publishers, 1965), 93.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘If you aren't careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing’?” Last verified 6 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/if-you-arent-careful-the-newspapers-will-have-you-hating/

Something wrong on this page?

Tell us what’s off. A link helps but isn’t required — “this is the wrong person” is a useful report on its own. Nothing here changes the page directly; it goes to our review queue and a human checks it.

Only used to tell you if we act on your report. We never sell or share it.

Copied