“I could spend the rest of my life READING, Just satisfying myCURIOSITY- because you can hardly mention anything I'm not curious about.”

“My alma mater was books, a good library.... I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity.”

“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.”

“When I am dead--I say it that way because from the things I know, I do not expect to live long enough to read this book in its finished form--I want you to just watch and see if I'm not right in what I say: that the white man, in his press, is going to identify me with "hate". He will make use of me dead, as he has made use of me alive, as a convenient symbol, of "hatred"--and that will help him escape facing the truth that all I have been doing is holding up a mirror to reflect, to show, the history of unspeakable crimes that his race has committed against my race.”

“As long as you are convinced you have never done anything, you can never do anything.”

“Usually when people are sad, they don't do anything. They just cry over their condition. But when they get angry, they bring about a change.”

“Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you're a man, you take it.”