Quote collection
780 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"The thing that has made the so-called Negro in America fail, more than any other thing, is your, my, lack of knowledge concerning history. We know less about history than anything else."
"I have rarely talked to anyone about my mother, for I believe that I am capable of killing a person, without hesitation, who happened to make the wrong kind of remark about my mother. So I purposely don't make any opening for some fool to step into."
"America's most dangerous and threatening black man is the one who has been kept sealed up by the Northerner in the black ghettos - the Northern white power structure's system to keep talking democracy while keeping the black man out of sight somewhere, around the corner."
"People involved in a revolution don't become part of the system; they destroy the system... The Negro revolution is no revolution because it condemns the system and then asks the system it has condemned to accept them."
"[My half-sister] Ella and I always were much closer as basic types; we're dominant people, and [my other half-sister] Mary has always been mild and quiet, almost shy."
"The black people in this country are taught that their religion and the best religion is the religion of Islam, and when one accepts the religion of Islam, he's known as a Muslim."
"Today we have a modern Belshazzar and a modern Pharaoh sitting in Washington D.C."
"Speaking like this doesn't mean that we're anti-white, but it does mean we're anti-exploitation, we're anti-degradation, we're anti-oppression."
"What you did to one, you did to all. So they couldn't have that type of religion being taught in the prison."
"By explaining the difference between segregation and separation. Segregation is that which is forced upon an inferior by a superior. Separation is done voluntarily by two equals. If I have children and they live in my house, I care for them, they're dependent upon me. And their dependence upon me puts me in a position to regulate their lives, control their lives, tell them where to go, where they can't go. That's a form of segregation."
"The economic philosophy of black nationalism only means that our people need to be re-educated into the importance of controlling the economy of the community in which we live, which means that we won't have to constantly be involved in picketing and boycotting other people in other communities in order to get jobs."
"At this point I hadn't yet gotten deep into the historic condition that negroes in this country are confronted with, but at that point in my prison studies I, I read, I studied Islam as a religion more so than as I later come to know it in its connection with the plight or problem of Negroes in this country."
"The problem facing our people here in America is bigger than all other personal or organizational differences. Therefore, as leaders, we must stop worrying about the threat that we seem to think we pose to each other's personal prestige, and concentrate our united efforts toward solving the unending hurt that is being done daily to our people here in America."
"The prison systems in this country actually are exploitative and they are not in any way rehabilitative."
"It's easy to become a satellite today without even being aware of it. This country can seduce God. Yes, it has that seductive power; the power of the dollar."
"All of us were mischievous at some time or another, I more so than any of the rest. [My brother] Philbert and I kept a battle going. ... Even in our fighting, there was a feeling of brotherly union."
"I don't think that anyone has been really created more by the white press than the civil right leaders."
"[Islam] is not measured by the color of his skin."
"Racism is a human problem and a crime that is absolutely so ghastly that a person who is fighting racism is well within his rights to fight against it by any means necessary until it is eliminated."
"What I want to know is how the white man, with the blood of black people dripping off his fingers, can have the audacity to be asking black people [why] they hate him?"