Foreign diplomats could have modeled their conduct on the way the Negro postmen, Pullman porters, and dining car waiters of Roxbury [Massachusetts] acted, striding around as if they were wearing top hats and cutaways.

It's easy to become a satellite today without even being aware of it. This country can seduce God. Yes, it has that seductive power; the power of the dollar.

After I made my tour in the Middle, into the Middle-East and Africa and visited Mecca and other places, I think that the separation [ from the Black Muslim movement] became psychological as well as physical, so that I could look at it more objectively and - and separate that which was good from that which was bad.

Reform is for people who have government connections, revolution is for the people!

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

It's almost impossible to separate the actions, or it's also, it's almost impossible to separate the oppression and exploitation, criminal oppression and criminal exploitation of the American negro from the color of the skin of the person who is the oppressor or the exploiter.

If you have no critics you'll likely have no success.