"I'm with an old family" was the euphemism used to dignify the professions of white folks' cooks and maids who talked so affectedly among their own kind in Roxbury [Massachusetts] that you couldn't even understand them.

Time is on the side of the oppressed today, it's against the oppressor. Truth is on the side of the oppressed today, it's against the oppressor. You don't need anything else.

The subject I most disliked was mathematics. I have thought about it. I think the reason was that mathematics leaves no room for argument. If you made a mistake, that was all there was to it.

After four hundred years of slave labor, we have some back pay coming, a bill owed to us that must be collected.

Sitting at the table doesn't make you a diner, unless you eat some of what's on the plate. Being here in America doesn't make you an American. Being born here in America doesn't make you an American.

Uncle Sam has no conscience. They don't know what morals are. They don't know what morals are. They don't try and eliminate an evil because it's evil, or because it's illegal, or because it's immoral; they eliminate it only when it threatens their existence.

I remember one night at Muz-dalifah ... I lay awake amid sleeping Muslim brothers and I learned that pilgrims from every land-every color and class and rank-all snored in the same language.

We are fighting for the right to live as free humans in this society. In fact, we are actually fighting for rights that are even greater than civil rights and that is human rights.

Brothers and sisters, friends and enemies: I just can't believe that everyone in here is a friend, and I don't want to leave anyone out.

Those who would hunt a man need to remember that a jungle also contains those who hunt the hunters.