We have talked long enough in this country about equal rights. It is time now to write the next chapter – and to write it in the books of law.

I hope that people will finally come to realize that there is only one ‚race‘ – the human race – and that we are all members of it.

Until the great mass of the people shall be filled with the sense of responsibility for each other’s welfare, social justice can never be attained.

The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much it is whether we provide enough for those who have little.

We don’t want to promote any system that treats the fact that an individual is LGBT as a personality disorder. And anything that perpetuates that perception is harmful – not only to that member of the community but the entire community.

We who follow the teachings of Elijah Muhammad don’t want to be forced to integrate. Integration is wrong. We don’t want to live with the white man; that’s all.

Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‚within the limits of the law‘ because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.

The Nation of Islam’s main focus was teaching black pride and self-awareness. Why should we keep trying to force ourselves into white restaurants and schools when white people didn’t want us? Why not clean up our own neighborhoods and schools instead of trying to move out of them and into white people’s neighborhoods?

You have young men of color in many communities who are more likely to end up in jail or in the criminal justice system than they are in a good job or in college. And, you know, part of my job, that I can do, I think, without any potential conflicts, is to get at those root causes.

The fact is that ours is the first generation that can look disease and extreme poverty in the eye, look across the ocean to Africa, and say this, and mean it. We do not have to stand for this. A whole continent written off – we do not have to stand for this.

The sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality.

To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.

The only thing that white people have that black people need, or should want, is power-and no one holds power forever.

I should tie myself to no particular system of society other than of socialism.

White people just don’t want their slaves to be free. That’s the whole thing.

I will far rather see the race of man extinct than that we should become less than beasts by making the noblest of God’s creation, woman, the object of our lust.

All men are by nature equal, made all of the same earth by one Workman; and however we deceive ourselves, as dear unto God is the poor peasant as the mighty prince.

Throwing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.

I know I got it made while the masses of black people are catchin‘ hell, but as long as they ain’t free, I ain’t free.

During the 60’s, I was, in fact, very concerned about the civil rights movement.

In the summer of 1966, I went to Mississippi to be in the heart of the civil-rights movement, helping people who had been thrown off the farms or taken off the welfare roles for registering to vote. While working there, I met the civil-rights lawyer I later married – we became an interracial couple.

All black Americans have slave names. They have white names; names that the slave master has given to them.

I should like to know if, taking this old Declaration of Independence, which declares that all men are equal upon principle, you begin making exceptions to it, where will you stop? If one man says it does not mean a Negro, why not another say it does not mean some other man?

The argument that resistance to the war should remain strictly nonviolent seems to me overwhelming.

Slavery takes hold of few, but many take hold of slavery.

I think we must get rid of slavery, or we must get rid of freedom.

You know, one race will not be a survivor if the other one dies, and that’s something that we should think about.

Black Power is giving power to people who have not had power to determine their destiny.

We make the future sustainable when we invest in the poor, not when we insist on their suffering.

I believe that a child going without an education is a crime.

I favor the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and it must be enforced at gunpoint if necessary.

We reached a high point in my opinion with the passage of the civil rights legislation and Martin Luther King’s success and the crusade of others. I think we kind of breathed a sigh of relief as if we had achieved the end of racial discrimination or white supremacy.

The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.

You’ve got to watch the politics of AIDS. The politics of AIDS can work both for and against the victims of AIDS.

No one has been barred on account of his race from fighting or dying for America, there are no white or colored signs on the foxholes or graveyards of battle.

Income inequity has to be addressed.

Women should be obscene and not heard.

The people made worse off by slavery were those who were enslaved. Their descendants would have been worse off today if born in Africa instead of America. Put differently, the terrible fate of their ancestors benefitted them.

I hate the way they portray us in the media. If you see a black family it says they’re looting, if you see a white family it says they’re looking for food.

The right of every American to first-class citizenship is the most important issue of our time.

Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.

Our Declaration of Independence was held sacred by all and thought to include all; but now, to aid in making the bondage of the Negro universal and eternal, it is assailed, sneered at, construed, hawked at, and torn, till, if its framers could rise from their graves, they could not at all recognize it.

The peasant must always be helped technically, economically, morally and culturally. The guerrilla fighter will be a sort of guiding angel who has fallen into the zone, helping the poor always and bothering the rich as little as possible in the first phases of the war.

Peace and justice are two sides of the same coin.

For years, decades, the system has taught us to stay quiet. They’ve made us believe that those who take to the streets to speak up are crazy, criminals, troublemakers.

Those who ‚abjure‘ violence can do so only because others are committing violence on their behalf.

We can’t afford to be killing one another.

I always have been an activist for things that were just authentically a part of my life, that I felt connected to.

The ideals and principles for which Dr King fought have never been forgotten and are as relevant today as they were 40 years ago.

It’s always going to be a fight for anyone who isn’t an older white man. I want to fight for anyone who doesn’t have a fight.

We can’t have special interests sitting shotgun. We gotta have middle class families up in front. We don’t mind the Republicans joining us. They can come for the ride, but they gotta sit in back.

To like an individual because he’s black is just as insulting as to dislike him because he isn’t white.

We’ve come a long way from the days where there was state-enforced segregation. But we still have a way to go.

We must restore hope to young people, help the old, be open to the future, spread love. Be poor among the poor. We need to include the excluded and preach peace.

I think many people in my community had very different kinds of mothers: they had mothers who acquiesced in the system of male and white-supremacist domination, and my mother never did. She just could not do it. It just wasn’t in her.

I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.

Jesus never said a word about homosexuality. In all of his teachings about multiple things – he never said that gay people should be condemned. I personally think it is very fine for gay people to be married in civil ceremonies.

Palestinians have no wealth or power.

It’s hard to wrap my head around the fact that there are people who can’t or won’t see what Black Lives Matter is trying to accomplish.

That old law about ‚an eye for an eye‘ leaves everybody blind. The time is always right to do the right thing.

A riot is the language of the unheard.