I look at the problem of the twenty-two million Afro-Americans as being a problem that's so broad in scope that it's almost impossible for any organization to see it in its entirety.

Nobody should teach the black man in America to turn the other cheek, unless someone is teaching the white man in America to turn the other cheek.

You have, you can only answer it this way: by turning it around. Can the negro - who is the victim of the system - escape the collective stigma that is placed upon all Negroes in this country?

Sitting at the table doesn’t make you a diner, unless you eat some of what’s on that plate. Being here in America doesn’t make you an American. Being born here in America doesn’t make you an American.

There can be no black-white unity until there is first some black unity... We cannot think of uniting with others, until after we have first united among ourselves. We cannot think of being acceptable to others until we have first proven acceptable to ourselves.

While I was in prison, I was indulging in all types of vice, right within the prison. And I never was ostracized as much by the penal authorities while I was participating in all of the evils of the prison, as they tried to ostracize me after I became a Muslim.

A race of people is like and individual man; until it uses its own talent, takes pride in its own history, expresses its own culture, affirms its own selfhood, it can never fulfill itself.