The common goal of 22 million Afro-Americans is respect as human beings, the God-given right to be a human being. Our common goal is to obtain the human rights America has been denying us. We can never get civil rights in America until our human rights are first restored. We will never be recognized as citizens there until we are first recognized as humans.

You don't have to be a man to fight for freedom. All you have to do is to be an intelligent human being.

How could there be any difference between The Messenger and me? I am his slave, his servant, his son. He is the leader, the only spokesman for the Black Muslims.

Since Western society is deteriorating, it has become overrun with immorality, and God is going to judge it, and destroy it. And the only way the black people caught up in this society can be saved is not to integrate into this corrupt society, but to separate from it, to a land of our own, where we can reform ourselves, lift up our moral standards and try to be godly.

You don't do anything to further your stay aboard a ship that you see is going to go down to the bottom of the ocean.

My father didn't know his real name. My father got his name from his grandfather and he got his name from his grandfather and he got it from the slave master.

The law of nature gives a man the right to defend himself when he's attacked. And God's law itself gives a man the right to defend himself when he's attacked.so, peaceful suffering and passive resistance and all of that stuff is all right maybe in India somewhere, where the people in India outnumber the whites - about a million to one.But here in America, when you tell that's like an elephant sitting down on a - on a mouse in India with [Mahatma] Gandhi.