Islamic Preacher Quotes

Anything I do today, I regard as urgent.

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

White is an attitude.

If the Emancipation Proclamation was authentic, you wouldn't have a race problem.

I think it's possible for me to approach the whole problem with a broader scope.When you look at something through an, an organizational eye, whether it's a, a religious organization, political organization, or a civic organization, if you look at it only through the eye of that organization, you see what the organization wants you to see. But you lose your ability to be objective.

In this country, these Negro leaders have Negroes sittin' - sitting down, thinking that that - there's dignity towards sitting in.

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

The junkie can never start to cure himself until he recognizes his true condition.

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

I don't favor violence. If we could bring about recognition and respect of our people by peaceful means, well and good. Everybody would like to reach his objectives peacefully. But I'm also a realist. The only people in this country who are asked to be nonviolent are black people.

The Government is responsible for what is happening to black people in America.

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.

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.

It takes heart to be a guerrilla warrior because you’re on your own. In conventional warfare you have tanks and a whole lot of other people with you to back you up - planes over your head and all that kind of stuff. But a guerrilla is on his own. All you have is a rifle, some sneakers and a bowl of rice, and that’s all you need - and a lot of heart.

Reverend Galamison is fighting a hard battle against great opposition, and I admire a man who fights a hard battle against great opposition.

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.

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.

I believe it's a crime for anyone who is being brutalized to continue to accept that brutality without doing something to defend himself.

I think there are plenty of good people in America, but there are also plenty of bad people in America and the bad ones are the ones who seem to have all the power and be in these positions to block things that you and I need.

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.

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

I don't even call it violence when it's in self defense; I call it intelligence.

I believe in the brotherhood of man, all men, but I don't believe in brotherhood with anybody who doesn't want brotherhood with me. I believe in treating people right, but I'm not going to waste my time trying to treat somebody right who doesn't know how to return the treatment.

We are nonviolent with people who are nonviolent with us.

I was going through the hardest thing, also the greatest thing, for any human being to do; to accept that which is already within you, and around you.

I'm sorry to say that 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.

Ralph Bunche, who is an internationally recognized and respected diplomat, can't stay in a hotel in Georgia, which means that no matter what the accomplishment, the intellectual, the academic, or professional level of a negro is, collectively he stands condemned.

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.

In my recent travels into African countries and others, I was impressed by the importance of having a working unity among all peoples, black as well as white.

History is a people's memory, and without a memory, man is demoted to the lower animals.

A man without any history is like a tree without roots

[People] earn extra money [in prison] selling contraband, dope, and things of that sort to the inmates, and so that really it's an exploiter.

The white race is doomed not because it's white but because of its misdeeds.

The common goal of 22 million Afro-Americans is respect as human beings, the God-given right to be a human being. Our common goal is to obtain the human rights America has been denying us. We can never get civil rights in America until our human rights are first restored. We will never be recognized as citizens there until we are first recognized as humans.

Culture is an indispensable weapon in the freedom struggle.

Everything that came out of Europe, every blue-eyed thing, is already an American. And as long as you and I have been over here, we aren't Americans yet.

Hatred and anger are powerless when met with kindness.

Once I was, yes. But now I have turned my direction away from anything that's racist.

If it's necessary to form a Black Nationalist army, we'll form a Black Nationalist army. It'll be ballot or the bullet. It'll be liberty or it'll be death.

You spend so much time barking up the civil-rights tree, you don't even know there's a human-rights tree on the same floor.

It is not a case of our people...wanting either separation or integration. The use of these words actually clouds the real picture. The 22 million Afro-Americans don't seek either separation or integration. They seek recognition and respect as human beings.

Now, you integration-minded Negroes are trying to force yourselves on your former slave master, trying to make him accept you in his drawing room; you want to hang out with his women rather than the women of your own kind.

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.

For tommorow belongsto those that prepare for it today.

Anytime you find someone more successful than you are, especially when you're both engaged in the same business - you know they're doing something that you aren't.

It isn't the American white man who is a racist, but it's the American political, economic and social atmosphere that automatically nourishes a racist psychology in the white man.

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.

Liberty or death was what brought about the freedom of whites in this country from the English.

You have, you can only answer it this way: by turning it around. Can the negro - who is the victim of the system - escape the collective stigma that is placed upon all Negroes in this country?

A Negro just can't be whipped by somebody white and return with his head up in the neighborhood, especially in those days, when sports and, to a lesser extent show business, were the only fields open to Negroes, and when the ring was the only place a Negro could whip a white man and not be lynched.

The only difference between [America] and South Africa, South Africa preaches separation and practices separation, America preaches integration and practices segregation. This is the only difference, they don't practice what they preach, whereas South Africa practices and preaches the same thing.

Armed with the knowledge of our past, we can with confidence charter a course for our future. Culture is an indispensable weapon in the freedom struggle. We must take hold of it and forge the future with the past.

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.

They tell us we are all citizens, that we were born in this country. Well, a cat can have kittens in the oven, but that doesn't make them biscuits!

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.

I did a lot of things as a Muslim that I am sorry for now.

As long as you are convinced you have never done anything, you can never do anything.

If [politician] is not fulfilling his function, they then can set up the machinery to remove him from that position by whatever means necessary.

When you are equal with another person, the problem of integration doesn't even arise.

I'm for truth, no matter who tells it.