Quote collection
780 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"While I was in prison, I was indulging in all types of vice, right within the prison. And I never was ostracized as much by the penal authorities while I was participating in all of the evils of the prison, as they tried to ostracize me after I became a Muslim."
"America is the first country... that can actually have a bloodless revolution."
"That's not our problem, that's America's problem. If the average American knew the trouble that Uncle Sam is in all over this earth, they could see that it - we are closer toward getting a separate territory in this country than the integrationists are toward getting integration."
"This is a God-given right of any man.Anytime you have a man who is getting lynched, and what are his people supposed to do? Sit around and forgive the lyncher or wait on the United States government to go in and get the lyncher, like the United States government did in the case of, of Charles Mack Parker, and the FBI found who were the guilty lynchers, and right to this day, the FBI, the highest law enforcement body in the land, has yet to bring the lynchers of Mack Parker to justice?"
"It is the system itself that, that is incapable of producing freedom for the twenty-two million Afro-Americans. Just like a chicken can't lay a duck egg, a chicken can't lay a duck egg, because the system of the chicken isn't constructed in the way to produce a duck egg. And just as that chicken system can't produce, is not capable to, of producing a duck egg, the political and economic system of this country is absolutely incapable of producing freedom and justice and equality and human dignity for the twenty-two million Afro-Americans."
"If you're black, you were born in jail, in the North as well as the South. Stop talking about the South. Long as you south of the Canadian border, you're south."
"I was going through the hardest thing, also the greatest thing, for any human being to do; to accept that which is already within you, and around you."
"...the collective white man had acted like a devil in virtually every contact he had with the world's collective non-white man."
"Most of the negro leaders who get the support of the power structure end up being against [Reverend] Galamison."
"Wyatt Walker can walk through Harlem. No one would know him."
"Among Negroes we have Negroes who are as white as some white people. Still there's a difference."
"When you want a nation, that's called nationalism... Black nationalism. A revolutionary is a Black nationalist. He wants a nation."
"The main part of the tree is the root, and the root is always beneath the ground. It never is brought out into the light."
"[The man] thinks he's being condemned because of his color but actually he's being condemned because of his deeds, his conscious behavior."
"What does a black man look like begging for a cup of coffee in a white restaurant, and doesn't have a job to back up his - to pay for it when, when - when he does get the coffee? It's putting the cart before the horse."
"The white people who are guilty of white supremacy are trying to hide their own guilt by accusing The Honorable Elijah Muhammad of teaching black supremacy when he tries to uplift the mentality, the social, mental and economic condition of the black people in America."
"I think you'll find also that if the negro ever realizes that he should begin to fight for real for his freedom, there are many whites who will fight on his side with him."
"History is not hatred."
"I think that the problem of the American negro goes beyond the principle of any organization whether it's a religious, political, or otherwise."
"The same thing that Uncle Tom did on the plantation before [Abe] Lincoln issued the so-called Emancipation Proclamation.I have no thinking on the matter. But he's teaching the black people to suffer peacefully, patiently, until the white man makes up his mind that you're a human being the same as he."