Education is an important element in the struggle for human rights. It is the means to help our children and thereby increase self-respect. Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today.

In my recent travels into African countries and others, I was impressed by the importance of having a working unity among all peoples, black as well as white.

If someone puts their hands on you make sure they never put their hands on anybody else again.

Forget the methods or the differences in methods. As long as we agree that the thing that the Afro-American wants and needs is recognition and respect as a human being.

Let's cool it brothers . . . Spoken to his assassins, three men who stabbed him 16 times.

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.

Only time [JF] Kennedy made any, took any action to even look like he identified with negroes was when he was forced to. Kennedy didn't even make his speech based on this problem being a moral issue until Negroes exploded in Birmingham.