I think teaching a man to hate himself is much more criminal than teaching a man to hate someone else.

For 12 long years I lived within the narrow-minded confines of the 'straightjacket world' created by my strong belief that Elijah Muhammad was a messenger direct from God Himself, and my faith in what I now see to be a pseudo-religious philosophy that he preaches.... I shall never rest until I have undone the harm I did to so many well-meaning, innocent Negroes who through my own evangelistic zeal now believe in him even more fanatically and more blindly than I did.

America has allowed white people to kill and brutalize those they don't like.

The only persons who really changed history are those who changed men's thinking about themselves.

I never will let anyone make, maneuver me into making a distinction between the Mississippi form of discrimination and the New York City form of discrimination. It's, it's both discrimination; it's all discrimination.

I was going through the hardest thing, also the greatest thing, for any human being to do; to accept that which is already within you, and around you.

Anytime you find someone more successful than you are, especially when you're both engaged in the same business - you know they're doing something that you aren't.