Somebody," said Jacques, "your father or mine, should have told us that not many people have ever died of love. But multitudes have perished, and are perishing every hour - and in the oddest places! - for the lack of it.

No one can possibly know what is about to happen: it is happening, each time, for the first time, for the only time.

People who treat other people as less than human must not be surprised when the bread they have cast on the waters comes floating back to them, poisoned.

No man is a devil in his own mind.

People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction.

It must be remembered that in those great days I was considered to be an "integrationist" - this was never, quite, my own idea of myself - and Malcolm was considered to be a "racist in reverse." This formulation, in terms of power - and power is the arena in which racism is acted out - means absolutely nothing: it may even be described as a cowardly formulation. The powerless, by definition, can never be "racists," for they can never make the world pay for what they feel or fear except by the suicidal endeavor which makes them fanatics or revolutionaries, or both.

We can make America what America must become.