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.

The prison systems in this country actually are exploitative and they are not in any way rehabilitative.

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.

To me, the thing that is worse than death is betrayal. You see, I could conceive death, but I could not conceive betrayal.

Never allow your enemies to educate your children.

We're primarily interested in solving the problem of 20 million black people. And if integration is going to solve the problem tomorrow, then let's integrate. But since the Supreme Court issued its desegregation decision seven years ago, and you only have about six or seven percent integration now, on an educational level, that means that the black man trying to use integration as a means of solving his problem will be another 100 years just getting integration on an educational level.

Any group, any group that can't work with all other groups, if they are genuinely interested in solving the problems of the Negro collectively why, I don't think that that group is really sincerely motivated toward reaching a solution.