I live like a man who's dead already! I have no fear whatsoever of anybody or anything

I look at the problem of the twenty-two million Afro-Americans as being a problem that's so broad in scope that it's almost impossible for any organization to see it in its entirety.

I'm with an old family" was the euphemism used to dignify the professions of white folks' cooks and maids who talked so affectedly among their own kind in Roxbury [Massachusetts] that you couldn't even understand them.

[At a young age] I had learned enough about women to know not to pressure them when they're thinking something out; they'll tell you when they're ready.

And just because you have colleges and universities doesn't mean you have education.

I think teaching a man to hate himself is much more criminal than teaching a man to hate someone else.

[People] earn extra money [in prison] selling contraband, dope, and things of that sort to the inmates, and so that really it's an exploiter.