The Honorable Elijah Muhammad is teaching the black man, you're a human man.All you have to do is dignify yourself. You don't have to wait for any white man to recognize you. Recognize yourself. Love each other. Practice harmony and brotherhood among your own kind.

You're not supposed to be so blind with patriotism that you can't face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who says it.

The cornerstones of this country's operation are economic and political strength and power. The black man doesn't have the economic strength - and it will take time for him to build it. But right now the American black man has the political strength and power to change his destiny overnight.

[At a young age] I had learned enough about women to know not to pressure them when they're thinking something out; they'll tell you when they're ready.

The 22 million or 30 million, whatever the case may be, Afro-Americans in the United States were still Africans.

It isn't the American white man who is a racist, but it's the American political, economic and social atmosphere that automatically nourishes a racist psychology in the white man.

I believe that it would be almost impossible to find anywhere in America a black man who has lived further down in the mud of human society than I have; or a black man who has been any more ignorant than I have; or a black man who has suffered more anguish during his life than I have. But it is only after the deepest darkness that the greatest joy can come; it is only after slavery and prison that the sweetest appreciation of freedom can come.