“I ain’t going to jail no more. The only way we gonna stop them white men from whuppin’ us is to take over. What we gonna start sayin’ now is Black Power!”

I usually say I did the best I could with what I had. I have no major regrets.

If a white man wants to lynch me, that’s his problem. If he’s got the power to lynch me, that’s my problem. Racism is not a question of attitude; it’s a question of power.

Before a group can enter the open society, it must first close ranks.

One of the tragedies of the struggle against racism is that up to now there has been no national organization which could speak to the growing militancy of young black people in the urban ghetto.

I maintain that every civil rights bill in this country was passed for white people, not for black people.

Capitalism is a stupid system, a backward system.

I also know that while I am black I am a human being, and therefore I have the right to go into any public place. White people didn’t know that.Every time I tried to go into a place they stopped me

Leaders in Africa are so corrupt that we are certain if we put dogs in uniforms and put guns on their shoulders, we’d be hard put to distinguish them.

So that the failures to pass a civil rights bill isn’t because of Black Power, isn’t because of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee; it’s not because of the rebellions that are occurring in the major cities.

Now, then, in order to understand white supremacy we must dismiss the fallacious notion that white people can give anybody their freedom.

There is a higher law than the law of government. That’s the law of conscience.

We were aware of the fact that death walks hand in hand with struggle.

One does not fight to influence change and then leave the change to someone else to bring about.

No man can given anybody his freedom.

Go home and tell your daughters they are beautiful.

There has been only a civil rights movement, whose tone of voice was adapted to an audience of liberal whites.

We black and they white. They got things and we ain’t. They do things and we can’t. It’s just like livin’ in jail.

Goddamnit, look! We live here and they live there.

I could have killed her when we first met and I’ve been out of jail by now.

In jail I was just like everybody else, I was sitting there praying, feeling caged.

It was better to be in a jail where you could bang the walls than in a jail you could not see.

Jesus would be framed and in jail if he was living today.

Term limits aren’t enough. We need jail.

I am prepared to oppose a Jim Crow army till I rot in jail.