Revolution is always based on land. Revolution is never based on begging somebody for an integrated cup of coffee.

Any time you see someone more successful than you are, they are doing something you aren't.

If I did see a white man who was willing to go to jail or throw himself in front of a car in behalf of the so-called "negro cause," the test that I'd put to him, I'd ask him, "Do you think negro, when Negroes are being attacked they should defend themselves even at the risk of having to kill the one who's attacking them?" If that white man told me, "Yes," I'd shake his hand.

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.

I remember one thing that marred this time for me; the movie "Gone with the Wind." When it played in Mason [MI], I was the only Negro in the theater, and when Butterfly McQueen went into her act, I felt like crawling under the rug.

I asked inmate in New York, Warden Fay at that time if, if it didn't make a better inmate out of the Negroes who accepted it and he said, "Yes." So I asked him then what was it about it that he considered to be so danger, and he, dangerous, and he pointed out that it was the cohesiveness that it produced among the inmates. They stuck together.

I've never seen a sincere white man, not when it comes to helping black people. Usually things like this are done by white people to benefit themselves. The white man's primary interest is not to elevate the thinking of black people, or to waken black people, or white people either. The white man is interested in the black man only to the extent that the black man is of use to him. The white man's interest is to make money, to exploit.