To the same degree that your understanding of and attitude toward Afrika become positive, you'll find that your understanding of and your attitude toward yourself will also become positive.

I think the black man in America wants to be recognized as a human being; and it's almost impossible for one who has enslaved another to bring himself to accept the person who used to pull his plow, who used to be an animal, subhuman, who used to be considered as such by him-it's almost impossible for that person in his right mind to accept that person as his equal.

There were tens of thousands of pilgrims, from all over the world. They were of all colors, from blue-eyed blonds to black-skinned Africans. But we were all participating in the same ritual, displaying a spirit of unity and brotherhood that my experiences in America had led me to believe never could exist between the white and non-white.

Don't be bitter. Remember Lot's wife when they kill me, and they surely will. You have to use all of your energy to do what it is you have to do. [To his wife Betty Shabazz]

During the past eleven days here in the Muslim world, I have eaten from the same plate, drunk from the same glass, and slept on the same rug - while praying to the same God - with fellow Muslims, whose eyes were the bluest of blue, whose hair was the blondest of blond, and whose skin was the whitest of white. And in the words and in the deeds of the white Muslims, I felt the same sincerity that I felt among the black African Muslims of Nigeria, Sudan and Ghana.

I don't advocate violence; but if a man steps on my toes, I'll step on his.

I think that any black man who teaches black people to turn the other cheek and suffer peacefully after they've been turning the cheek and suffering peacefully for 400 years in a land of bondage, under the most cruel, inhuman and wicked slavemaster that any people have ever been under, he is doing those people an injustice, and he's a traitor to his own people.