What you did to one, you did to all. So they couldn't have that type of religion being taught in the prison.

You can’t hate the roots of the tree without ending up hating the tree. You can’t hate your origin without ending up hating yourself. You can’t hate the land, your motherland, the place that you come from, and we can’t hate Africa without ending up hating ourselves. The Black man in the Western Hemisphere—North America, Central America, South America, and in the Caribbean—is the best example of how one can be made, skillfully, to hate himself that you can find anywhere on this earth.

I think that the problem of the American negro goes beyond the principle of any organization whether it's a religious, political, or otherwise.

It’s just like when you’ve got some coffee that’s too black, which means it’s too strong. What you do? You integrate it with cream; you make it weak. If you pour too much cream in, you won’t even know you ever had coffee. It used to be hot, it becomes cool. It used to be strong, it becomes weak. It used to wake you up, now it’ll put you to sleep.

He [liberal white person] may stand with you through thin, but not thick; when the chips are down, you'll find that as fixed in him as his bone structure is his sometimes subconscious conviction that he's better than anybody black.

Some things are better done than said.

Those type of whites who are always going to jail with Negroes are the ones who tell Negroes to be loving and be kind and be patient and be nonviolent and turn the other cheek.