Nothing the European mind ever devised was meant to do anything but to facilitate the European's control over the world.

We will have taken one giant step forward when we face this reality: Powerful people never teach powerless people how to take their power away from them.

We have been educated into believing someone else's concept of the deity, and someone else's standard of beauty. You have the right to practice any religion and politics in a way that best suits your freedom, your dignity, and your understanding. And once you do that, you don't apologize.

The African had opinions about the universe that eventually turned out to be true.

If you don't like the situation, if you are afraid and can't deal with it, nothing wrong with your legs, get out of there.

Malcolm X found the language that communicated across the board, from college professor to floor sweeper, all at the same time, without demeaning the intellect of either.

I understood that my family was rich in love but would probably never own the land my father, John, dreamed of owning. My mother, Willie Ella Mays Clarke, was a washerwoman for poor white folks in the area of Columbus, Georgia where the writer Carson McCullers once lived.