“For you I know I’d even try to turn the tide.”

“There’s a lot of things blamed on me that never happened. But then, there’s a lot of things that I did that I never got caught at.”

“If this were a movie I’d be the bad guy.”

“I start a lot more songs than I finish, because I realize when I get into them, they’re no good. I don’t throw them away, I just put them away, store them, get them out of sight.”

“When I record somebody else’s song, I have to make it my own or it doesn’t feel right. I’ll say to myself, I wrote this and he doesn’t know it!”

“If you aren’t gonna say exactly how and what you feel, you might as well not say anything at all.”

“The only time to eat diet food is when you’re waiting for a steak to cook.”

“Wine cheers the sad, revives the old, inspires the young, makes weariness forget his toil.”

“I want to take Negroes out of the ghetto and put them in good neighborhoods in good houses.”

“I feel like a man who has been asleep somewhat and under someone else’s control. I feel that what I’m thinking and saying is now for myself. Before it was for and by the guidance of Elijah Muhammad. Now I think with my own mind, sir!”

“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 for one believe that if you give people a thorough understanding of what confronts them and the basic causes that produce it, they’ll create their own program, and when the people create a program, you get action.”

“I’m the man you think you are. If you want to know what I’ll do, figure out what you’ll do. I’ll do the same thing–only more of it.”

“One day, may we all meet together in the light of understanding.”

“Envy blinds men and makes it impossible for them to think clearly.”

“I have often reflected upon the new vistas that reading opened to me. I knew right there in prison that reading had changed forever the course of my life. As I see it today, the ability to read awoke in me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive.”

“Stumbling is not falling.” – Malcolm X

“Speaking like this doesn’t mean that we’re anti-white, but it does mean we’re anti-exploitation, we’re anti-degradation, we’re anti-oppression.”

“We black men have a hard enough time in our own struggle for justice, and already have enough enemies as it is, to make the drastic mistake of attacking each other and adding more weight to an already unbearable load.”

“Yes, I’m an extremist. The black race… is in extremely bad condition. You show me a black man who isn’t an extremist and I’ll show you one who needs psychiatric attention!”

“Most women defend themselves. It is the female of the species — it is the tigress and lioness in you — which tends to defend when attacked.”

“If it is once again one against forty-eight, then I am very sorry for the forty-eight.”

“One only gets to the top rung of the ladder by steadily climbing up one at a time, and suddenly all sorts of powers, all sorts of abilities which you thought never belonged to you–suddenly become within your own possibility and you think, Well, I’ll have a go, too.”

“Ought we not to ask the media to agree among themselves a voluntary code of conduct, under which they would not say or show anything which could assist the terrorists’ morale or their cause while the hijack lasted.”