I have rarely talked to anyone about my mother, for I believe that I am capable of killing a person, without hesitation, who happened to make the wrong kind of remark about my mother. So I purposely don't make any opening for some fool to step into.

The Negro revolution is controlled by foxy white liberals, by the Government itself. But the Black Revolution is controlled only by God.

I believe that it would be almost impossible to find anywhere in America a black man who has lived further down in the mud of human society than I have; or a black man who has been any more ignorant than I have; or a black man who has suffered more anguish during his life than I have. But it is only after the deepest darkness that the greatest joy can come; it is only after slavery and prison that the sweetest appreciation of freedom can come.

History is not hatred.

Abraham Lincoln was interested in, in saving the Union. Well, most negroes have been tricked into thinking that Lincoln was a negro lover whose primary aim was to free them, and he died because he freed them.

Once you change your philosophy, you change your thought pattern. Once you change your thought pattern, you change your attitude. Once you change your attitude, it changes your behavior pattern and then you go on into some action. As long as you gotta sit-down philosophy, you’ll have a sit-down thought pattern, and as long as you think that old sit-down thought you’ll be in some kind of sit-down action.

We cannot think of being acceptable to others until we have first proven acceptable to ourselves.