All my life, I have maintained that the people of the world can learn to live together in peace if they are not brought up in prejudice.

Sex was a pleasurable form of exercise, like dancing.

Friends, to me for years St. Louis represented a city of fear... humiliation... misery and terror... A city where in the eyes of the white man a Negro should know his place and had better stay in it.

You must get an education. You must go to school, and you must learn to protect yourself. And you must learn to protect yourself with the pen, and not the gun.

I'm not intimidated by anyone. Everyone is made with two arms, two legs, a stomach and a head. Just think about that.

I believe in prayer. It's the best way we have to draw strength from heaven.

I have walked into the palaces of kings and queens and into the houses of presidents. And much more. But I could not walk into a hotel in America and get a cup of coffee, and that made me mad.