Human Rights Activist Quotes

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

“The American Negro never can be blamed for his racial animosities - he is only reacting to four hundred years of the conscious racism of the American whites.”

“If we are extremists, then we are not ashamed of it, for the conditions that our people suffer are extreme, and extreme illness can not be cured with moderate medicine”

“If integration will get [black man] that [respect as the human being], all right. If segregation will get him that, all right. If separation will get him that, all right.But after he gets integration and he still doesn't have this dignity and this recognition as a human being, then his problem is still not solved.”

“The Negro's so-called 'revolt' is merely an asking to be accepted into the existing system!”

“If you have no critics you'll likely have no success.”

“Don't you run around here trying to make friends with somebody who's depriving you of your rights. They're not your friends, no, they're your enemies. Treat them like that.”

“Of all our studies, it is history that is best qualified to reward our research.”

“Education is our passport to the future.”

“The greatest mistake of the movement has been trying to organize a sleeping people around specific goals. You have to wake the people up first, then you'll get action.”

“Don't be in a hurry to condemn because he doesn't do what you do or think as you think or as fast. There was a time when you didn't know what you know today.”

“I'm for truth, no matter who tells it. I'm for justice, no matter who it's for or against.”

“Right now, in every big city ghetto, tens of thousands of yesterday's and today's school dropouts are keeping body and soul together by some form of hustling in the same way I did.”

“Either you are a citizen or you are not a citizen at all. If you are citizen, you are free; if youre not a citizen you are a slave.”

“A man without any history is like a tree without roots”

“When I am dead--I say it that way because from the things I know, I do not expect to live long enough to read this book in its finished form--I want you to just watch and see if I'm not right in what I say: that the white man, in his press, is going to identify me with "hate". He will make use of me dead, as he has made use of me alive, as a convenient symbol, of "hatred"--and that will help him escape facing the truth that all I have been doing is holding up a mirror to reflect, to show, the history of unspeakable crimes that his race has committed against my race.”

“Just because a cat has kittens in the oven, that doesn't make them biscuits.”

“Whenever I walk the street and see people ready to get with it, that's my reward.”

“As bad as I was, as much trouble and worry as I caused my mother, I loved her.”

“I had one warden tell me since I've been out, and I visited an inmate in prison right here in New York, Warden Fay up at Green Haven. I visited an inmate in prison and he told me that he didn't want anybody in there trying to spread this religion.”

“You can cuss out colonialism, imperialism, and all other kinds of ism, but it's hard for you to cuss that dollarism. When they drop those dollars on you, your soul goes.”

“You're not supposed to be so blind with patriotism that you can't face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who says it.”

“A wise man can play the part of a clown, but a clown can't play the part of a wise man.”

“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!”

“Whenever you're going after something that belongs to you, anyone who's depriving you of the right to have it is a criminal. Understand that. Whenever you are going after something that is yours, you are within your legal rights to lay claim to it. And anyone who puts forth any effort to deprive you of that which is yours, is breaking the law, is a criminal.”