To me, the thing that is worse than death is betrayal.

I have often reflected upon the new vistas that reading has opened to me. I knew right there in prison that reading had changed forever the course of my life. As I see it today, the ability to read awoke inside me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive.

In my opinion, mature political action is the type of action that that involves a program of re-education and information that will enable the black people in the black community to see the fruits that they should be receiving from the politicians who are over them and, thereby, they are then able to determine whether or not the politician is really fulfilling his function.

Instead of working for white man and helping him hold up a government that continues to suppress us socially and, and exploit us economically and oppress us politically, let us go and enter our own territory and use our own talents to uplift ourselves by our own bootstraps. And then he will recognize us for what we are.

Here was one of the white man's most characteristic behavior patterns - where black men are concerned. He loves himself so much that he is startled if he discovers that his victims don't share his vainglorious self-opinion.

Forget the methods or the differences in methods. As long as we agree that the thing that the Afro-American wants and needs is recognition and respect as a human being.

I don't think that the objective of the American negro is white middle-class values because what are white middle-class values?