If you stick a knife nine inches into my back and pull it out three inches, that is not progress.

There is nothing in our book, the Koran, that teaches us to suffer peacefully. Our religion teaches us to be intelligent.

The prison systems in this country actually are exploitative and they are not in any way rehabilitative.

I think that the best thing that a person can be is sincere.

Why can't the black man have a God? What's so wrong when a black man says his God will protect him form his white foe? If Jehovah can slay Philistines for the Jews, why can't Allah slay crackers for the so-called Negro?

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?

That morning was when I first began to reappraise the 'white man.' It was when I first began to perceive that 'white man,' as commonly used, means complexion only secondarily; primarily it described attitudes and actions.