My father didn't know his real name. My father got his name from his grandfather and he got his name from his grandfather and he got it from the slave master.

I'm trying to get at this. That is, a man may know that he belongs to, say, a group - this group or that group - but he feels himself lost within that group, trapped within his own deficiencies and without personal purpose.

Just like Pharaoh couldn't get a solution to his problem until he talked to Moses, or Nebuchadnezzar or Belshazzar couldn't get a solution to his problem until he talked to Daniel, the white man in America today will never understand the race problem or come anywhere near getting a solution to the race problem until he talks to The Honorable Elijah Muhammad.

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.

The separating of a section of America for Afro- Americans is similar to expecting a heaven in the sky somewhere after you die.

I think the black man in America wants to be recognized as a human being; and it's almost impossible for one who has enslaved another to bring himself to accept the person who used to pull his plow, who used to be an animal, subhuman, who used to be considered as such by him-it's almost impossible for that person in his right mind to accept that person as his equal.

The greatest mistake of the movement has been trying to organize a sleeping people around specific goals. You have to wake the people up first, then you'll get action.