I just don't believe that when people are being unjustly oppressed that they should let someone else set rules for them by which they can come out from under that oppression.

I think that the problem of the American negro goes beyond the principle of any organization whether it's a religious, political, or otherwise.

They [prisons] are not designed to rehabilitate the - the inmate, though the, the public propaganda is that this is their function.

I think that any black man who teaches black people to turn the other cheek and suffer peacefully after they've been turning the cheek and suffering peacefully for 400 years in a land of bondage, under the most cruel, inhuman and wicked slavemaster that any people have ever been under, he is doing those people an injustice, and he's a traitor to his own people.

The law of nature gives a man the right to defend himself when he's attacked. And God's law itself gives a man the right to defend himself when he's attacked.so, peaceful suffering and passive resistance and all of that stuff is all right maybe in India somewhere, where the people in India outnumber the whites - about a million to one.But here in America, when you tell that's like an elephant sitting down on a - on a mouse in India with [Mahatma] Gandhi.

I was going through the hardest thing, also the greatest thing, for any human being to do; to accept that which is already within you, and around you.

The Honorable Elijah Muhammad is teaching the black man, you're a human man.All you have to do is dignify yourself. You don't have to wait for any white man to recognize you. Recognize yourself. Love each other. Practice harmony and brotherhood among your own kind.