It's hard for anyone intelligent to be nonviolent. Everything in the universe does something when you start playing with his life, except the American Negro. He lays down and says, 'Beat me, daddy.'

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.

You're not supposed to be so blind with patriotism that you can't face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who says it.

Since I learned the truth in Mecca, my dearest friends have come to include all kinds - some Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, agnostics, and even atheists! I have friends who are called capitalists, Socialists, and Communists! Some of my friends are moderates, conservatives, extremists - some are even Uncle Toms! My friends today are black, brown, red, yellow, and white!

I don't even call it violence when it's in self defense; I call it intelligence.

The junkie can never start to cure himself until he recognizes his true condition.

The number one thing that has to be done, [black men] has to be retaught, be given - he has to be reeducated and made to know that he's a man, like anyone else, and then he can stand on his own two feet, like others have done.