The government has departments to deal with the special interest groups that make themselves heard and felt. A Department of Agriculture cares for the farmers' needs. There is a Department of Health, Education and Welfare. There is a Department of the Interior - in which the Indians are included. Is the farmer, the doctor, the Indian, the greatest problem in America today? No - it is the black man! There ought to be a Pentagon-sized Washington department dealing with every segment of the black man's problems.

Hence I have no mercy or compassion in me for a society that will crush people, and then penalize them for not being able to stand up under the weight.

I imagine that one of the biggest troubles with colleges is there are too many distractions, too much panty-raiding, fraternities, and boola-boola and all of that.

What I want to know is how the white man, with the blood of black people dripping off his fingers, can have the audacity to be asking black people [why] they hate him?

Just because a cat has kittens in the oven, that doesn't make them biscuits.

New York white youth were killing victims; that was a 'sociological' problem. But when black youth killed somebody, the power structure was looking to hang somebody.

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.