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?

If someone is going down the wrong road, he doesn’t need motivation to speed him up. What he needs is education to turn him around.

My philosophy is it’s none of my business what people say of me and think of me. I am what I am, and I do what I do. I expect nothing and accept everything. And it makes life so much easier.

I am sure there’s going to be times when I do things wrong that no one’s going to like and everyone’s going to think I’m terrible and rubbish but I know I’m going to go through those times, and it’s just about understanding that that’s going to happen.

There is no scriptural basis for segregation.

A man is never more truthful than when he acknowledges himself a liar.

With people of limited ability modesty is merely honesty. But with those who possess great talent it is hypocrisy.

It is a man’s own mind, not his enemy or foe, that lures him to evil ways.

When the rich wage war, it’s the poor who die.

We pledge ourselves to liberate all our people from the continuing bondage of poverty, deprivation, suffering, gender and other discrimination.

I’m my own worst critic, and if I don’t pull off what I think I wanted to do in my head, then I won’t be a happy girl.

Many people identify their sense of self with the problems they have, or think they have.

Every thought you produce, anything you say, any action you do, it bears your signature.

The game is changing with songs like ‚Earned It‘ as opposed to it changing me.

As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.

You can be obsessed with the bad things people say and the good things; either way, you’re obsessed with yourself, and I’m not – you can become unhinged so easily.

Have the humility to learn from those around you.

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

I write from my soul. This is the reason that critics don’t hurt me, because it is me. If it was not me, if I was pretending to be someone else, then this could unbalance my world, but I know who I am.

Testing oneself is best when done alone.

I think the best thing I ever did with my life was stand up and say I’ve got Alzheimer’s.

I did used to have nightmares about the idea that when I die, there is a spark of consciousness which basically creates the world. ‚Is the world going to disappear if this spark of consciousness disappears? And how do I know it won’t? How do I know there’s anything there except what I’m conscious of?‘

Could the young but realize how soon they will become mere walking bundles of habits, they would give more heed to their conduct while in the plastic state.

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

Millions of people live their entire lives without finding themselves. But it is something I must do.

One might say that our words are a movie screen that reveals what we have been thinking and the attitudes we have.

If small things have the power to disturb you, then who you think you are is exactly that: small.

Look at the means which a man employs, consider his motives, observe his pleasures. A man simply cannot conceal himself!

Until justice is blind to color, until education is unaware of race, until opportunity is unconcerned with the color of men’s skins, emancipation will be a proclamation but not a fact.

I have never felt more confident in myself, more clear on who I am as a woman. But I am constantly thinking about my own health and making sure that I’m eating right and getting exercise and watching the aches and pains. I want to be this really fly 80-90-year old.

It has always been a mystery to me how men can feel themselves honoured by the humiliation of their fellow beings.

I have never regarded myself as a hero, but Tenzing undoubtedly was.

Black and brown pride have been taught in my household for a long time.

People should not make me out to be like Jesus; I don’t walk on water.

It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.

I really have no interest in myself.

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

Each one has to find his peace from within. And peace to be real must be unaffected by outside circumstances.

I know who I am, I know what I can and can’t do. I know what I will and won’t do. I know what I’m capable of and I don’t agree to do things that I don’t think I can pull off.

No one but a fool is always right.

I have spent many years of my life in opposition, and I rather like the role.

If you’re white and you’re wrong, then you’re wrong; if you’re black and you’re wrong, you’re wrong. People are people. Black, blue, pink, green – God make no rules about color; only society make rules where my people suffer, and that why we must have redemption and redemption now.

The rich will do anything for the poor but get off their backs.

Telling us to obey instinct is like telling us to obey ‚people.‘ People say different things: so do instincts. Our instincts are at war… Each instinct, if you listen to it, will claim to be gratified at the expense of the rest.

You know, it’s not the world that was my oppressor, because what the world does to you, if the world does it to you long enough and effectively enough, you begin to do to yourself.

And suddenly I realised that I was no longer driving the car consciously. I was driving it by a kind of instinct, only I was in a different dimension.

Know, first, who you are, and then adorn yourself accordingly.

Mindfulness helps you go home to the present. And every time you go there and recognize a condition of happiness that you have, happiness comes.

The Negro needs the white man to free him from his fears. The white man needs the Negro to free him from his guilt.

When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty.

I’m not a marketing person. I don’t ask myself questions. I go by instinct.

Knowing that you are going to die is, I suspect, the beginning of wisdom.

God has given you one face, and you make yourself another.

To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else – means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.

People are not disturbed by things, but by the view they take of them.

Is it not enough to know the evil to shun it? If not, we should be sincere enough to admit that we love evil too well to give it up.

We do not yet possess ourselves, and we know at the same time that we are much more.

I have an existential map. It has ‚You are here‘ written all over it.

Justice and power must be brought together, so that whatever is just may be powerful, and whatever is powerful may be just.

I had no talent for science. What was infinitely worse: all my fraternity brothers were engineers.

I periodically realize every few years that the only person whose taste I really trust is me.