If you can justify killing to eat meat, you can justify the conditions of the ghetto. I cannot justify either one.

That's easy, to stand in a nightclub, where most of the people that come in, they came to see you.

I buy about $1,500 worth of papers every month. Not that I trust them. I'm looking for the crack in the fabric.

Just being a Negro doesn't qualify you to understand the race situation any more than being sick makes you an expert on medicine.

If I had to write down the most important people in the history of this planet, No.1 would be (abolitionist) John Brown. Why? Because he's a white man who said he would die for the cause, because they could take him, but they weren't going to take his grandchildren. That brother was beautiful.

We used to root for the Indians against the cavalry, because we didn't think it was fair in the history books that when the cavalry won it was a great victory, and when the Indians won it was a massacre.

The NAACP is a wonderful organization . . . But do you realize if tomorrow morning we had complete integration, all them cats would be outta work?