"When you deal with the past, you're dealing with history, you're dealing
actually with the origin of a thing. When you know the origin, you know the
cause. If you don't know the origin, you don't know the cause. And if you
don't know the cause, you don't know the reason, you're just cut off, you're
left standing in mid-air. So the past deals with history or the origin of
anything -- the origin of a person, the origin of a nation, the origin of an
incident. And when you know the origin, then you get a better understanding of
the causes that produce whatever originated there and its reason for originating
and its reason for being. It's impossible for you and me to have a balanced
mind in this society without going into the past, because in this particular
society, as we function and fit into it right now, we're such an underdog, we're
trampled upon, we're looked upon as almost nothing. Now if we don't go into the
past and find out how we got this way, we will think that we were always this
way. And if you think that you were always in the condition that you're in
right now, it's impossible for you to have too much confidence in yourself, you
become worthless, almost nothing. But when you go back into the past and find
our where you once were, then you will know that you weren't always at this
level, that you once had attained a higher level, had made great achievements,
contributions to society, civilization, science and so forth. And you know that
if you once did it, you can do it again; you automatically get the incentive,
the inspiration and the energy necessary to duplicate what our forefathers
formerly did. But by keeping us completely cut off from our past, it is easy
for the man who has power over us to make us willing to stay at this level
because we will feel that we were always at this level, a low level. That's why
I say it is so important for you and me to spend time today learning something
about the past so that we can better understand the present, analyze it, and
then do something about it."
Malcolm X on Afro-American History