You can always chase a dream but it will not count if you never catch it.

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

I have often reflected upon the new vistas that reading has opened to me. I knew right there in prison that reading had changed forever the course of my life. As I see it today, the ability to read awoke inside me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive.

When I said [ I would work with any organization] I would make the, the reservation that I would work with any organization as long as it didn't make us compromise our religious principles.

The main part of the tree is the root, and the root is always beneath the ground. It never is brought out into the light.

Most of [ the Negro leaders] who - who, whose existence or whose position of leadership depends upon the - on the subsidy or crumbs for - the crumbs from the white man's table, will only say what that white man wants to hear. When they get behind the door they talk a different language.

When we send our children to school, they learn nothing about us other than we used to be cotton pickers. Why, your grandfather was Nat Turner; your grandfather was Toussaint L'Ouverture; your grandfather was Hannibal. It was your grandfather's hands who forged civilization and it was your grandmother's hands who rocked the cradle of civilization. But the textbooks tell our children nothing.