“What the white man in America needs to realize is there's a new thinking among black people today which makes them not willing to sit around and wait for five years to get this problem solved, much less a hundred years.”
Quote collection
Thinking Quotes — page 899 of 4756
“We don't think that we're begging for anything. We think we're demanding what is ours by right. And all we're asking for is an opportunity to do something for ourselves, rather than to sit around as a beggar, begging for jobs and begging for education from - for someone else for the rest of our lives.”
“[At a young age] I had learned enough about women to know not to pressure them when they're thinking something out; they'll tell you when they're ready.”
“Abraham Lincoln was interested in, in saving the Union. Well, most negroes have been tricked into thinking that Lincoln was a negro lover whose primary aim was to free them, and he died because he freed them.”
“In this country, these Negro leaders have Negroes sittin' - sitting down, thinking that that - there's dignity towards sitting in.”
“I've never seen a sincere white man, not when it comes to helping black people. Usually things like this are done by white people to benefit themselves. The white man's primary interest is not to elevate the thinking of black people, or to waken black people, or white people either. The white man is interested in the black man only to the extent that the black man is of use to him. The white man's interest is to make money, to exploit.”
“I don't think that the objective of the American negro is white middle-class values because what are white middle-class values?”
“The American Negro has been entirely brainwashed from ever seeing or thinking of himself, as he should, as a part of the non-white peoples of the world.”
“I think, again, that that does the whole problem a, a disservice. It's not a case of our wanting to mix socially with whites. And when you - and the whites are right in the South when they say that getting a cup of coffee in a restaurant is not going to solve - is all right.”
“[The man] thinks he's being condemned because of his color but actually he's being condemned because of his deeds, his conscious behavior.”
“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.”
“I think that the problem of the American negro goes beyond the principle of any organization whether it's a religious, political, or otherwise.”
“[ Negro leaders] never let the white man know exactly what black people are thinking.”
“The man was a deceiver. He was deceitful and I will never bite my tongue in saying that. I don't think he was anything but a politician, and he used Negroes to get elected and to get votes.”
“I think that Nehru probably was a good man, although I didn't go for it. I don't go for anybody who is passive. I don't go for anybody who advocates passivism or peaceful suffering in any form whatsoever. I don't go for it.”
“I go for Mao Tse-tung much more than, than Nehru because I think that Nehru brought his country up in a beggar's role.”
“If I did see a white man who was willing to go to jail or throw himself in front of a car in behalf of the so-called "negro cause," the test that I'd put to him, I'd ask him, "Do you think negro, when Negroes are being attacked they should defend themselves even at the risk of having to kill the one who's attacking them?" If that white man told me, "Yes," I'd shake his hand.”
“After I made my tour in the Middle, into the Middle-East and Africa and visited Mecca and other places, I think that the separation [ from the Black Muslim movement] became psychological as well as physical, so that I could look at it more objectively and - and separate that which was good from that which was bad.”
“I think it's possible for me to approach the whole problem with a broader scope.When you look at something through an, an organizational eye, whether it's a, a religious organization, political organization, or a civic organization, if you look at it only through the eye of that organization, you see what the organization wants you to see. But you lose your ability to be objective.”
“Ten guards and the warden couldn't have torn me out of those books. Months passed without even thinking about being imprisoned....I had never been so truly free in my life.”