Since Western society is deteriorating, it has become overrun with immorality, and God is going to judge it, and destroy it. And the only way the black people caught up in this society can be saved is not to integrate into this corrupt society, but to separate from it, to a land of our own, where we can reform ourselves, lift up our moral standards and try to be godly.

Give us some separate territory in this country where our people can go and do something for ourselves. And provide us with everything that we need to keep that new territory going, until we are self-sufficient.

Foreign diplomats could have modeled their conduct on the way the Negro postmen, Pullman porters, and dining car waiters of Roxbury [Massachusetts] acted, striding around as if they were wearing top hats and cutaways.

I will be happy to give my life to see some of these white devils die.

...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.

To me, political action involves making the politician who represents us know that he either produces or he is out, and he's out one way or another.

It is only after the deepest darkness that the greatest light can come; it is only after extreme grief that the greatest joy can come.