No president ever had more power than [Franklin Delano] Roosevelt.

This was my first lesson about gambling: if you see somebody winning all the time, he isn't gambling, he's cheating. Later on in life, if I were continuously losing in any gambling situation, I would watch very closely.

No, I’m not an American. I’m one of the 22 million black people who are the victims of Americanism. One of the … victims of democracy, nothing but disguised hypocrisy. So, I’m not standing here speaking to you as an American, or a patriot, or a flag-saluter, or a flag-waver - no, not I. I’m speaking as a victim of this American system. And I see America through the eyes of the victim. I don’t see any American dream; I see an American nightmare.

Among Negroes we have Negroes who are as white as some white people. Still there's a difference.

Education is our passport to the future.

You'd have civil war. You'd have a race war in this country.

The black man in Africa had mastered the arts and sciences. He knew the course of the stars in the universe before the man up in Europe knew that the earth wasn't flat.