It"s good to keep wide-open ears and listen to what everybody else has to say, but when you come to make a decision, you have to weigh all of what you"ve heard on its own, and place it where it belongs, and come to a decision for yourself; you"ll never regret it. But if you form the habit of taking what someone else says about a thing without checking it out for yourself, you"ll find that other people will have you hating your friends and loving your enemies.

The greatest mistake of the movement has been trying to organize a sleeping people around specific goals. You have to wake the people up first, then you'll get action.

In fact, once he is motivated no one can change more completely than the man who has been at the bottom. I call myself the best example of that.

How can a Negro say America is his nation? He was brought here in chains; he was put in slavery an worked like a mule for three hundred years; he was separated from his land, his culture, his God, his language!

Revolutions are never peaceful.

People don't realize how a man's whole life can be changed by one book.

How can you thank a man for giving you what's already yours? How then can you thank him for giving you only part of what's already yours?