I'm not concerned with your liking or disliking me... All I ask is that you respect me as a human being.

If I had to choose between baseball’s Hall of Fame and first class citizenship for all of my people. I would say first-class citizenship.

Negroes aren't seeking anything which is not good for the nation as well as ourselves. In order for America to be 100 percent strong -- economically, defensively and morally -- we cannot afford the waste of having second- and third-class citizens.

I am not concerned with being liked or disliked. I am concerned with being respected

I don’t think it matters what I believe, only what I do.

The many of us who attain what we may and forget those who help us along the line we've got to remember that there are so many others to pull along the way. The farther they go, the further we all go.

I know that I am a black man in a white world. . . I know that I never had it made.