Power in defense of freedom is greater than power in behalf of tyranny and oppression, because power, real power, comes from our conviction which produces action, uncompromising action.

I don't think that the objective of the American negro is white middle-class values because what are white middle-class values?

We don't think that we're begging for anything. We think we're demanding what is ours by right. And all we're asking for is an opportunity to do something for ourselves, rather than to sit around as a beggar, begging for jobs and begging for education from - for someone else for the rest of our lives.

Everything that came out of Europe, every blue-eyed thing, is already an American. And as long as you and I have been over here, we aren't Americans yet.

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.

The religious philosophy that they had adopted, in my opinion, was the only thing and is the only thing that can remove the white from the mind of the white man and the negro from the mind of the negro. I have seen what Islam has done with our people, our people who had this feeling of negro - and it had a psychological effect of putting them in a mental prison.

Ralph Bunche, who is an internationally recognized and respected diplomat, can't stay in a hotel in Georgia, which means that no matter what the accomplishment, the intellectual, the academic, or professional level of a negro is, collectively he stands condemned.