I had blind faith in him. My faith in Elijah Muhammad was more blind and more uncompromising than any faith that any man has ever had for another man. And so I didn't try and see him as he actually was.

Instead of the Negro leaders having the black man begging for a chance to - to dine in white restaurants, the Negro leader should be showing the black man how to do something to strengthen his own economy.

It is the attitude of the American white man that is making him stand condemned today before the eyes of the entire dark world and even before the eyes of the Europeans. It is his attitude, his haughty, holier-than-thou attitude.

When you have your own bus, then you have dignity. When you have your own school, you have dignity. When you have your own country, you have dignity.When you have something of your own, you have dignity. But whenever you are begging for a chance to participate in that which belongs to someone else, or use that which belongs to someone else, on an equal basis with the owner, that's not dignity. That's ignorance.

America needs to understand Islam, because this is the one religion that erases from its society the race problem. Throughout my travels in the Muslim world, I have met, talked to, even eaten with people who in America would have been considered 'white,' but the 'white' attitude had been removed from their minds by the religion of Islam.

[My half-sister] Ella and I always were much closer as basic types; we're dominant people, and [my other half-sister] Mary has always been mild and quiet, almost shy.

[Negro] should realize that he is living in a war zone, and he is at war with an enemy that is as vicious and criminal and inhuman as any war-making country has ever been.