We’re not Americans, we’re Africans who happen to be in America. We were kidnapped and brought here against our will from Africa. We didn’t land on Plymouth Rock – that rock landed on us.
If someone puts their hands on you make sure they never put their hands on anybody else again.
I am for violence if non-violence means we continue postponing a solution to the American black man’s problem just to avoid violence.
You are either free or not free.
The only thing power respects, is power.
It takes two to tango; when I go, you go.
Just because a cat has kittens in the oven, that doesn’t make them biscuits.
Sitting at the table doesn’t make you a diner, unless you eat some of what’s on that plate.
There seems in most countries to be either one extreme or the other. Truly a paradise could exist wherever material progress and spiritual values could be properly balanced.
I believe in recognizing every human being as a human being – neither white, black, brown, or red.
If Christianity had asserted itself in Germany, six million Jews would have lived.
For one to control one’s thoughts and feelings means one can actually control one’s atmosphere and all who walk into its sphere of influence.
I think there are plenty of good people in America, but there are also plenty of bad people in America and the bad ones are the ones who seem to have all the power and be in these positions to block things that you and I need.
Once I was, yes. But now I have turned my direction away from anything that’s racist.
Whenever I walk the street and see people ready to get with it, that’s my reward.
As bad as I was, as much trouble and worry as I caused my mother, I loved her.
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.
One of my brothers read a lot. His head was forever in some book.
To tell a woman not to talk too much was like telling Jesse James not to carry a gun, or a hen not to cackle.
Anytime you live in a society supposedly based upon law and it doesn’t enforce its own laws because the color of a man’s skin happens to be wrong, then I say those people are justified to resort to any means necessary to bring about justice when the government can’t give them justice.