When you mentioned something about self improvement, the implication is that the negro is something distinct or different, and, therefore, needs to learn how to improve himself. Negro leaders resent this being said, not because they don't know that it's true, but they're thinking, they're looking at it personally. They think that the implication is directed even at them, and that they, and they duck this responsibility.

We're not Americans, we're Africans who happen to be in America. We were kidnapped and brought here against our will from Africa. We didn't land on Plymouth Rock - that rock landed on us.

If the black man is allowed to separate and go into some land of his own where he can solve his own problems, there won't be any explosion, and the Negroes who want to stay with the white man, let them stay with the white man - but those who want to leave, let them go to The Honorable Elijah Muhammad.

The political philosophy of black nationalism means that the black man should control the politics and the politicians in his own community; no more.

The American system itself is incapable. It is as incapable of producing freedom for the Afro-American as the system of a chicken is of producing a duck egg.

An English writer telephoned me from London, asking questions. One was, ‘What’s your alma mater?’ I told him, ‘Books.

The white man is going to keep you integration-minded Negroes cooped up here in America, and when you discover that the white man is a trickster, a devil, that he has no intentions of integrating, then you Negroes will run wild.