I was in prison and I was an atheist. I didn't believe in anything.

No black person married to a white person can speak for me!

Never allow your enemies to educate your children.

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.

When you have to pass a law to make a man let me have a house, or you have to pass a law to make a man let me go to school, or you have to pass a law to make a man let me walk down the street, you have to enforce that law and you'd have to be living actually in a police state. It would take a police state in this country.

We don't think that we're begging for anything. We think we're demanding what is ours by right.

What does a black man look like begging for a cup of coffee in a white restaurant, and doesn't have a job to back up his - to pay for it when, when - when he does get the coffee? It's putting the cart before the horse.