Social change rarely comes about through the efforts of the disenfranchised. The middle class creates social revolutions.

You have to make more noise than anybody else; you have to make yourself more obtrusive than anybody else; you have to fill all the papers more than anybody else; in fact, you have to be there all the time and see that they do not snow you under, if you are really going to get your reform realized.

Liberals want to set up social welfare committees to help whites and West Indians love each other in Birmingham. But all such efforts are doomed to failure. For the strong the weak are just too much of a temptation; and in all fairness it seems to me quite wicked for black people to have tempted the powerful with so much powerless-ness for so long. The obvious answer is to redress this imbalance in power.

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.

Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living.

Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing, never can bring about a reform.

How can one not speak about war, poverty, and inequality when people who suffer from these afflictions don't have a voice to speak?

The mistake the world is making with the simple peoples is to try and hurry them into political concepts they don't understand and aren't prepared to cope with. I know. I am a peasant myself. ... I say, Spit on the big, fancy schemes. I want all the little things first. Then perhaps we can get on to the bigger things.