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.

Sitting at the table doesn't make you a diner, unless you eat some of what's on that plate.

For 12 long years I lived within the narrow-minded confines of the 'straightjacket world' created by my strong belief that Elijah Muhammad was a messenger direct from God Himself, and my faith in what I now see to be a pseudo-religious philosophy that he preaches.... I shall never rest until I have undone the harm I did to so many well-meaning, innocent Negroes who through my own evangelistic zeal now believe in him even more fanatically and more blindly than I did.

The separating of a section of America for Afro- Americans is similar to expecting a heaven in the sky somewhere after you die.

When you have your own bus, then you have dignity. When you have your own school, you have dignity. When you have your own country, you have dignity.When you have something of your own, you have dignity. But whenever you are begging for a chance to participate in that which belongs to someone else, or use that which belongs to someone else, on an equal basis with the owner, that's not dignity. That's ignorance.

America is such a paradoxical society, hypocritically paradoxical, that if you don't have some humor, you'll crack up.

Ralph Bunche, who is an internationally recognized and respected diplomat, can't stay in a hotel in Georgia, which means that no matter what the accomplishment, the intellectual, the academic, or professional level of a negro is, collectively he stands condemned.