There is no better teacher than adversity. Every defeat, every heartbreak, every loss, contains its own seed, its own lesson on how to improve your performance the next time.

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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.

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If you're not ready to die for it, put the word 'freedom' out of your vocabulary.

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Nonviolence is fine as long as it works.

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We who follow the Honorable Elijah Muhammad feel that when you try and pass integration laws here in America, forcing white people to pretend that they are accepting black people, what you are doing is making white people act in a hypocritical way.

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It's got to be the ballot or the bullet. The ballot or the bullet. If you're afraid to use an expression like that, you should get back in the cotton patch, you should get back in the alley.

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No, we are not anti-white. But we don't have time for the white man. The white man is on top already, the white man is the boss already... He has first-class citizenship already. So you are wasting your time talking to the white man. We are working on our own people.

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There is nothing in our book, the Koran, that teaches us to suffer peacefully. Our religion teaches us to be intelligent.

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You don't have to be a man to fight for freedom. All you have to do is to be an intelligent human being.

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The White man pays Reverend Martin Luther King so that Martin Luther King can keep the Negro defenseless.

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