My family was so poor we were close to eating the holes inside of doughnuts.

The real names of our people were destroyed during slavery. The last name of my forefathers was taken from them when they were brought to America and made slaves, and then the name of the slave master was given, which we refuse, we reject that name today and refuse it. I never acknowledge it whatsoever.

I don't think you can having an opportunity to ride either on the front or the back or in the middle of someone else's bus doesn't dignify you.

It's hard for anyone intelligent to be nonviolent. Everything in the universe does something when you start playing with his life, except the American Negro. He lays down and says, 'Beat me, daddy.'

To me, the thing that is worse than death is betrayal. You see, I could conceive death, but I could not conceive betrayal.

During the whole month that negroes were being beaten by police and washed down the sewer with water hoses, Kennedy and - and King was in jail begging for the federal government to intervene, Kennedy's reply was, "No federal statutes have been violated." And it was only when the negroes erupted that Kennedy come on the television with all his old pretty words.

America is the first country... that can actually have a bloodless revolution.