Whatever title or office we may be privileged to hold, it is what we do that defines who we are ... Each of us must decide what kind of person we want to be-what kind of legacy that we want to pass on.
When you deprive people of their right to live in dignity, to hope for a better future, to have control over their lives, when you deprive them of that choice, then you expect them to fight for these rights.
When you educate a girl, you kick-start a cycle of success. It makes economic sense. It makes social sense. It makes moral sense. But, it seems, it's not common sense yet.
A new world order is in the making, and it is up to us to prepare ourselves that we may take our rightful place in it.
America needs to understand Islam, because this is the one religion that erases from its society the race problem. Throughout my travels in the Muslim world, I have met, talked to, and even eaten with people who in America would have been considered white, but the white attitude was removed from their minds by the religion of Islam. I have never before seen sincere and true brotherhood practiced by all together, irrespective of their color.
Any time you beg another man to set you free, you will never be free. Freedom is something that you have to do for yourselves.
Be peaceful, be courteous, obey the law, respect everyone; but if someone puts his hand on you, send him to the cemetery.
Despite my firm convictions, I have been always a man who tries to face facts, and to accept the reality of life as new experience and new knowledge unfolds it. I have always kept an open mind, which is necessary to the flexibility that must go hand in hand with every form of intelligent search for truth.
I believe in human beings, and that all human beings should be respected as such, regardless of their color.
I have often reflected upon the new vistas that reading has 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 inside me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive.
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.
If you have a dog, I must have a dog. If you have a rifle, I must have a rifle. If you have a club, I must have a club. This is equality.
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.
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