The Negro is the child of two cultures - Africa and America. The problem is that in the search for wholeness all too many Negroes seek to embrace only one side of their natures.

The Christians who engaged in infamous persecutions and shameful inquisitions were not evil men but misguided men. The churchmen who felt they had an edict from God to withstand the progress of science, whether in the form of a Copernican revolution or a Darwinian theory of natural selection, were not mischievous men but misinformed men. And so Christ's words from the cross are written in sharp-edged terms across some of the most inexpressible tragedies of history: 'They know not what they do'.

It's very easy for one talking about violence and hatred for the white man to appeal to [Negro from ghetto]. I have never thought of this, but I think this is quite true, that if, even if you talk to them about nonviolence from a tactical point of view, they can't quite see it because they don't even know they're outnumbered.

Racial segregation must be seen for what it is, and that is an evil system, a new form of slavery covered up with certain niceties of complexity.

Black Power is a nihilistic philosophy born out of the conviction that the Negro can't win... the view that American society is so hopelessly corrupt and enmeshed in evil that there is no possibility of salvation from within.

Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism... We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now.

Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity.