The same thing that Uncle Tom did on the plantation before [Abe] Lincoln issued the so-called Emancipation Proclamation.I have no thinking on the matter. But he's teaching the black people to suffer peacefully, patiently, until the white man makes up his mind that you're a human being the same as he.

The 22 million or 30 million, whatever the case may be, Afro-Americans in the United States were still Africans.

I say that the negro, when he is, when, when they cease to look at him as a negro and realize that he's a human being, then they will realize that he is just as capable and has the right to do anything that any other human being on this earth has a right to do to defend himself.

As long as you are convinced you have never done anything, you can never do anything.

Mankind's history has proved from one era to another that the true criterion of leadership is spiritual. Men are attracted by spirit. By power, men are forced. Love is engendered by spirit. By power anxieties are created.

...What we need to do in the community, and in the city, and in the state. We need to stop airing our differences in front of the white man. Put the white man out of our meetings, number one, and then sit down and talk shop with each other. [That's] all you gotta do.

When you aren't affiliated with anything, and then you look at something, you look at it with your eye to the best of your ability.