A wise man can play the part of a clown, but a clown can’t play the part of a wise man.
How can you thank a man for giving you what’s already yours? How then can you thank him for giving you only part of what is yours?
The ability to read awoke inside of me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive.
The only way we’ll get freedom for ourselves is to identify ourselves with every oppressed people in the world. We are blood brothers to the people of Brazil, Venezuela, Haiti, Cuba – yes Cuba too.
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 ever happened to us is an ingredient.
I see America through the eyes of the victim. I don’t see any American dream – I see an American nightmare.
Don’t be in a hurry to condemn because he doesn’t do what you do or think as you think or as fast. There was a time when you didn’t know what you know today.
I believe in the brotherhood of man, all men, but I don’t believe in brotherhood with anybody who doesn’t want brotherhood with me. I believe in treating people right, but I’m not going to waste my time trying to treat somebody right who doesn’t know how to return the treatment.
I don’t even call it violence when it’s in self defense; I call it intelligence.
The greatest mistake of the movement has been trying to organize a sleeping people around specific goals. You have to wake the people up first, then you’ll get action.
You don’t have to be a man to fight for freedom. All you have to do is to be an intelligent human being.
You can’t hate the roots of a tree and not hate the tree.
As long as you are convinced you have never done anything, you can never do anything.
In fact, once he is motivated no one can change more completely than the man who has been at the bottom. I call myself the best example of that.
I have often reflected upon the new vistas that reading has opened to me. I knew right there in prison that reading had changed forever the course of my life. As I see it today, the ability to read awoke inside me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive.
We all like chicken.
We didn’t land on plymouth rock, Plymouth rock landed on us”.
I don’t see any American dream; I see an American nightmare.
I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity.-because you can hardly mention anything I am not curious about.
Do Your Best Work.