You are not responsible for being down, but you are responsible for getting up.

America is not like a blanket-one piece of unbroken cloth, the same color, the same texture, the same size. America is more like a quilt-many patches, many pieces, many colors, many sizes, all woven and held together by a common thread.

I hear that melting-pot stuff a lot, and all I can say is that we haven't melted.

Everywhere I go, kids walk around not with books under their arms, but with radios up against their heads. Children can't read or write, but they can memorize whole albums.

The white Christian church never raised to the heights of Christ. It stayed within the limit of culture.

When blacks are unemployed, they are considered lazy and apathetic. When whites are unemployed, it's considered a depression.