There was no racism; there was no problem [in Mecca].

Revolutions are never waged singing "We Shall Overcome." Revolutions are based upon bloodshed.

The Negro is nothing but an ex-slave who is now trying to get himself integrated into the slave master's house.

If I can't run my neighborhood you won't want me in your neighborhood.

First I might say that when a person, when a man separates from his wife, at the out start it's a physical separation but it's not a psychological separation. He still thinks of her in, in probably warm terms. And, but after the physical separation has taken, existed for a period of time, it becomes a psychological separation as well as physical. And he can then look at her more objectively. My split or separation from the Black Muslim movement at first was only a physical separation, but my heart was still there and it was impossible for me to, for me to look at it objectively.

The American system itself is incapable. It is as incapable of producing freedom for the Afro-American as the system of a chicken is of producing a duck egg.

I believe that it would be almost impossible to find anywhere in America a black man who has lived further down in the mud of human society than I have; or a black man who has been any more ignorant than I have; or a black man who has suffered more anguish during his life than I have. But it is only after the deepest darkness that the greatest joy can come; it is only after slavery and prison that the sweetest appreciation of freedom can come.