That's not a chip on my shoulder, that's your foot on my neck.

Daring to reach, to climb, to crawl, to scratch, to get back up when you've been knocked down, to push forward - ever forward - to forgive. It means sacrificing everything if necessary, to carve out a place for your own existence. It means living.

In Harlem, for instance, all of the stores are owned by white people, all of the buildings are owned by white people. The black people are just there - paying rent, buying the groceries; but they don't own the stores, clothing stores, food stores, any kind of stores; don't even own the homes that they live in. They are all owned by outsiders, and for these run-down apartment dwellings, the black man in Harlem pays more money than the man down in the rich Park Avenue section.

Martin Luther King has taken away from the Negro his Gov-given right to defend himself.

My Alma mater was books, a good library... I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity.

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.

[The man] thinks he's being condemned because of his color but actually he's being condemned because of his deeds, his conscious behavior.