I'm beginning to think that maybe everything that happens makes sense. Like, if it didn't make sense, how could it happen?

It demands great spiritual resilience not to hate the hater whose foot is on your neck, and an even greater miracle of perception and charity not to teach your child to hate.

If you think too far ahead, if you even try to think too far ahead, you'll never make it.

The American ideal is, after all, that everyone should be as much alike as possible.

For these are all our children, we will all profit by or pay for whatthey become.

You write in order to change the world ... if you alter, even by a millimeter, the way people look at reality, then you can change it.

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.