I had begun to read books and things and, in fact, one of the persons who started me thinking seriously was an atheist that I, another negro inmate whom I'd heard in a discussion with white inmates and who was able to hold his own at all levels. And he impressed me with his knowledge, and I began to listen very carefully to some of the things he said.

If you stick a knife nine inches into my back and pull it out three inches, that is not progress.

Once you change your philosophy, you change your thought pattern. Once you change your thought pattern, you change your attitude. Once you change your attitude, it changes your behavior pattern and then you go on into some action. As long as you gotta sit-down philosophy, you’ll have a sit-down thought pattern, and as long as you think that old sit-down thought you’ll be in some kind of sit-down action.

I think that the problem of the American negro goes beyond the principle of any organization whether it's a religious, political, or otherwise.

What I want to know is how the white man, with the blood of black people dripping off his fingers, can have the audacity to be asking black people [why] they hate him?

I shall never rest until I have undone the harm I did to so many well-meaning, innocent Negroes who through my own evangelistic zeal now believe in him even more fanatically and more blindly than I did.

I think that the best thing that a person can be is sincere.