How can a Negro say America is his nation? He was brought here in chains; he was put in slavery an worked like a mule for three hundred years; he was separated from his land, his culture, his God, his language!

You can't legislate good will - that comes through education.

I think that Nehru probably was a good man, although I didn't go for it. I don't go for anybody who is passive. I don't go for anybody who advocates passivism or peaceful suffering in any form whatsoever. I don't go for it.

If he [Uncle Sam] can't do this [integration], then they will - it will alienate them. And all of the hundreds of millions of dollars or billions of dollars that he has sent abroad trying to buy the friendship of the dark world will go right down the drain.

If the white man can come here uneducated and as an immigrant, and within 10 or 15 years set up an industry that provides job opportunities and educational opportunities for black people, then if the black man, the black leadership, who has access to all of this money and has all of these degrees today, can't use his talent and his know-how to set up business opportunities, job opportunities, housing opportunities for the black people the same as the white leaders have done for white people, then these black leaders need to get off the boat.

It is only after the deepest darkness that the greatest light can come; it is only after extreme grief that the greatest joy can come.

I have never seen white people who would sit, who would, who would approach a solution to their own problems nonviolently or passively. It's only when they are so-called "fighting for the rights of Negroes" that they nonviolently, passively, and lovingly, you know, approach the situation.