“People don’t realize how a man’s whole life can be changed by one book.”

Reading has changed the course of my life radically. I did not aim behind it to gain any certificates to improve my position. Rather, I wanted to live intellectually.

You get your freedom by letting your enemy know that you’ll do anything to get it. Then you’ll get it. It’s the only way you’ll get it.

Some things are better done than said.

Education is the means to help our children and thereby increase self-respect.

Education is the means to help our children and thereby increase self-respect.

Culture is an indispensable weapon in the freedom struggle.

Culture is an indispensable weapon in the freedom struggle.

All of our experiences fuse into our personality. Everything that ever happened to us is an ingredient.

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

To me, the thing that is worse than death is betrayal. I could conceive death, but I could not conceive betrayal.

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

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

I have more respect for a man who lets me know where he stands, even if he’s wrong, than the one who comes up like an angel and is nothing but a devil.

Mankind’s history has proved from one era to another that the true criterion of leadership is spiritual. Men are attracted by spirit. By power, men are forced. Love is engendered by spirit. By power anxieties are created.

Human rights are something you were born with. Human rights are your God-given rights. Human rights are the rights that are recognized by all nations of this earth.

Stumbling is not falling.

Everyone probably thinks that I’m a raving nymphomaniac, that I have an insatiable sexual appetite when the truth is I’d rather read a book.

In spite of the seven thousand books of expert advice, the right way to discipline a child is still a mystery to most fathers and mothers Only your grandmother and Genghis Khan know how to do it.

Every reader, if he has a strong mind, reads himself into the book, and amalgamates his thoughts with those of the author.

I hate books; they only teach us to talk about things we know nothing about.

His money went largely toward books, which to him were like sacred objects, providing ballast for his mind.

I had found my religion: nothing seemed more important to me than a book. I saw the library as a temple.

I really like to look like a history book. I can look the 1940s, I can look 1970s hippie-chic, or sometimes I’ll pull that ’80s Brooklyn hip-hop kid with the door-knocker earrings.

So many books, so little time.