One of my favorite quotes from the Autobiography of Malcolm X so far is, "I have never previously told anyone my sordid past in detail. I haven't done it now as though I might be proud of how bad, how evil, I was. But people are always speculating- why am I as I am? To understand that of any person, his whole life, from birth, must be reviewed. All of our experiences fuse into our personality. Everything that has ever happened to us is an ingredient."
Since I couldn't possibly know of every detail of Malcolm X's life, there is no way he could be fully known to me by this standard. I know the things he has deemed important enough to be included, and therefore I know which types of experiences he thinks most shape a person's personality, however.
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