Civil Rights Leader Quotes

Revolution is based on land. Land is the basis of all independence. Land is the basis of freedom, justice, and equality.

Imagine that -- a country that's supposed to be a democracy, supposed to be for freedom and all of that kind of stuff when they want to draft you and put you in the army and send you to Saigon to fight for them -- and then you've got to turn around and all night long discuss how you're going to just get a right to register and vote without being murdered. Why, that's the most hypocritical government since the world began!

The problem of the negro is so criminal that many individuals and organizations are going to have to sacrifice what they call their organizational principles if someone comes up with a solution that will really solve the problem.

The ability to read awoke inside of me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive.

In the past, yes, I have made sweeping indictments of all white people. I never will be guilty of that again - as I know now that some white people are truly sincere, that some truly are capable of being brotherly toward a black man. The true Islam has shown me that a blanket indictment of all white people is as wrong as when whites made blanket indictments against blacks.

Never allow your enemies to educate your children.

Stumbling is not falling.

I want to be remembered as someone who was sincere. Even if I made mistakes, they were made in sincerity. If I was wrong, I was wrong in sincerity.

What you and I need to do is learn to forget our differences. When we come together, we don't come together as Baptists or Methodists. You don't catch hell 'cause you're a Baptist, and you don't catch hell 'cause you're a Methodist... You don't catch hell because you're a Democrat or a Republican. You don't catch hell because you're a Mason or an Elk. And you sure don't catch hell 'cause you're an American; 'cause if you was an American, you wouldn't catch no hell. You catch hell 'cause you're a Black man. You catch hell, all of us catch hell, for the same reason.

Nonviolence is fine as long as it works.

The death of over 120 white people is a very beautiful thing.

So early in my life, I had learned that if you want something, you had better make some noise.

We assert that in those areas where the government is either unable or unwilling to protect the lives and property of our people, that our peopie are within our rights to protect themselves by whatever means necessary.

Any time you see someone more successful than you are, they are doing something you aren't.

You and I have never seen democracy; all we've seen is hypocrisy.

I don't think that the objective of the American negro is white middle-class values because what are white middle-class values?

You are either free or not free

I don't care how nice one is to you, the thing you must always remember is that almost never does he really see you as he sees himself, as he sees his own kind.

...What we need to do in the community, and in the city, and in the state. We need to stop airing our differences in front of the white man. Put the white man out of our meetings, number one, and then sit down and talk shop with each other. [That's] all you gotta do.

I think the only way one can really determine whether extremism in the defense of liberty is justified, is not to approach it as an american or a european or an African or an Asian, but as a human being. If we look upon it as different types, immediately we begin to think in terms of extremism being good for one and bad for another, or bad for one and good for another. But if we look upon it, if we look upon ourselves as human beings, I doubt that anyone will deny that extremism in defense of liberty, the liberty of any human being, is no vice.

I don't advocate violence; but if a man steps on my toes, I'll step on his.

If Africa wasn't beautiful the white man wouldn't want it.

[Islam] is not measured by the color of his skin.

America is subsidizing what is left of the prestige and strength of the once mighty Britain. The sun has set forever on that monocled, pith-helmeted resident colonialist, sipping tea with his delicate lady in the non-white colonies being systematically robbed of every valuable resource. Britain's superfluous royalty and nobility now exist by charging tourists to inspect the once baronial castles, and by selling memoirs, perfumes, autographs, titles, and even themselves.

I don't have any hate. I've got some sense. I'm not going to let anybody who hates me tell me to love him. I'm not that way-out.

We have to keep in mind at all times that we are not fighting for integration, nor are we fighting for separation. We are fighting for recognition as free humans in this society.

Whereas the only real solution to the race problem in this country is a solution that involves individual self improvement and collective self improvement in, whereas our own, wherein our own people are concerned.

Be nonviolent only with those who are nonviolent to you. And when you can bring me a nonviolent racist, bring me a nonviolent segregationist, then I'll get nonviolent. But don't teach me to be nonviolent until you teach some of those crackers to be nonviolent.

Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today.

My black brothers and sisters - of all religious beliefs, or of no religious beliefs - we all have in common the greatest binding tie we could have. We are all black people!

It's liberty or it's death. It's freedom for everybody or freedom for nobody.

How can a Negro say America is his nation? He was brought here in chains; he was put in slavery an worked like a mule for three hundred years; he was separated from his land, his culture, his God, his language!

I don't know - too much about Robert Williams tactics, but if he was trying to defend himself, he was within his God-given rights and within - and he was also within his natural right, because first law of nature is self-preservation.

We do not condemn the preachers as an individual but we condemn what they teach. We urge that the preachers teach the truth, to teach our people the one important guiding rule of conduct - unity of purpose.

And just because you have colleges and universities doesn't mean you have education.

If you are not willing to pay the price for freedom, you don't deserve freedom.

You show me a capitalist, and I'll show you a bloodsucker.

There is nothing in our book, the Koran, that teaches us to suffer peacefully. Our religion teaches us to be intelligent.

The British Empire was so vast and so powerful, the sun would never set on it. This is how big it was, yet these 13 little scrawny states, tired of taxation without representation, tired of being exploited and oppressed and degraded, told that big British Empire, liberty or death.

I'm for truth, no matter who tells it. I'm for justice, no matter who it is for or against. I'm a human being, first and foremost, and as such I'm for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.

I think as an intelligent person you would agree that when you are teaching among oppressed people that they should be relieved of their oppression not 100 or 10 years from now, but right now, you're going to find your talk is going to fall upon sympathetic ears.

If I go home and someone, and my child has blood running down her leg and someone tells me that a snake bit her, I'm going out and kill the snake. And when I find the snake, I'm not going to look and see if he has blood on his jaws.

By explaining the difference between segregation and separation. Segregation is that which is forced upon an inferior by a superior. Separation is done voluntarily by two equals. If I have children and they live in my house, I care for them, they're dependent upon me. And their dependence upon me puts me in a position to regulate their lives, control their lives, tell them where to go, where they can't go. That's a form of segregation.

Culture is an indispensable weapon in the freedom struggle.

When we see that our problem is so complicated and so all-encompassing in its intent and content, then we realize that it is no longer a Negro problem, confined only to the American Negro; that it is no longer an American problem, confined only to America, but it is a problem for humanity.

Only in this form of separation the black man is exploited. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad says that we should be separate, all right, but in this separate state or separate existence, the black man should be given the opportunity and the incentive to do for himself what the white man has done for himself.

The true Islam has shown me that a blanket indictment of all white people is as wrong as when whites make blanket indictments against blacks.

My sincerity is my credentials.

Any group, any group that can't work with all other groups, if they are genuinely interested in solving the problems of the Negro collectively why, I don't think that that group is really sincerely motivated toward reaching a solution.

That's not our problem, that's America's problem. If the average American knew the trouble that Uncle Sam is in all over this earth, they could see that it - we are closer toward getting a separate territory in this country than the integrationists are toward getting integration.

You can always chase a dream but it will not count if you never catch it.

My suspicious nature is that there's something that [ Reverend ] Galamison, about Galamison that must have some good in it or some right in it.

An English writer telephoned me from London, asking questions. One was, ‘What’s your alma mater?’ I told him, ‘Books.

In fact, once he is motivated no one can change more completely than the man who has been at the bottom. I call myself the best example of that.

As I say, if we bring up religion we'll have differences; we'll have arguments; and we'll never be able to get together.

America is the first country... that can actually have a bloodless revolution.

Despite my firm convictions, I have always been a man who tries to face facts, and to accept the reality of life as new experience and new knowledge unfolds. I have always kept an open mind, a flexibility that must go hand in hand with every form of the intelligent search for truth.

We can't teach what we don't know, and we can't lead where we can't go

To tell a woman not to talk too much was like telling Jesse James not to carry a gun, or a hen not to cackle.

America needs to understand Islam, because this is the one religion that erases from its society the race problem. Throughout my travels in the Muslim world, I have met, talked to, even eaten with people who in America would have been considered 'white,' but the 'white' attitude had been removed from their minds by the religion of Islam.