When the whites themselves are attacked, they believe in defending themselves and things of that sort.

Anytime you tell a man to turn the other cheek or to be nonviolent in the face of a violent enemy, you're making that man defenseless. You're robbing him of his God-given right to defend himself.

A Negro just can't be whipped by somebody white and return with his head up in the neighborhood, especially in those days, when sports and, to a lesser extent show business, were the only fields open to Negroes, and when the ring was the only place a Negro could whip a white man and not be lynched.

No president ever had more power than [Franklin Delano] Roosevelt.

Nonviolence is fine as long as it works.

Most of the, or I should say many of the negro leaders actually suffer themselves from an inferiority complex even though they say they don't.

I see America through the eyes of the victim. I don’t see any American dream; I see an American nightmare.