You know, if ever there was a people who should know how to practice brotherhood, it is the American Negro and it is the people of Egypt.

I think that Nehru probably was a good man, although I didn't go for it. I don't go for anybody who is passive. I don't go for anybody who advocates passivism or peaceful suffering in any form whatsoever. I don't go for it.

God is more lasting than the white man.

It’ll be the ballot or it’ll be the bullet. It’ll be liberty or it’ll be death. And if you’re not ready to pay that price don’t use the word freedom in your vocabulary.

Adam Clayton Powell's entire political career has to be looked at in the entire context of the American history and the history of, and the position of the Afro- American or negro in American history. [He] has done a remarkable job in fighting for rights of black people in this country. On the other hand, he probably hasn't done as much as he could or as much as he should because he is the most independent negro politician in this country.

If you're black, you were born in jail, in the North as well as the South. Stop talking about the South. Long as you south of the Canadian border, you're south.

Always that "if" was there, which meant that the one who was doomed could avoid the doom if he would change his way of behaving.