Great Throughts Treasury

"You don't have a revolution in which you love your enemy, and you don't have a revolution in which you are begging the system of exploitation to integrate you into it. Revolutions overturn systems. Revolutions destroy systems."

"You don't have a peaceful revolution. You don't have a turn-the-cheek revolution. There's no such thing as a nonviolent revolution."

"You get your freedom by not being confined. You get freedom by letting your enemy know that you'll do anything to get your freedom. You'll get it. It's the only way you'll get it...So don?t you run around here trying to make friends with somebody who's depriving you of your rights. They're not your friends. No, they're your enemies. Treat them like that and fight them and you'll get your freedom. And after you get your freedom, your enemy will respect you. He will respect you. I say that with no hate. I have no hate in me. I don't have any hate, but I've got some sense... I'm not going to let somebody who hates me to tell me to love him. I'm not that way out."

"You show me a capitalist, and I'll show you a bloodsucker"

"You put the government on the spot when you even mention Vietnam. They feel embarrassed ? you notice that?... It's just a trap that they let themselves get into... But they're trapped, they can't get out. You notice I said 'they.' They are trapped, They can't get out. If they pour more men in, they'll get deeper. If they pull the men out, it's a defeat. And they should have known that in the first place. France had about 200,000 Frenchmen over there, and the most highly mechanized modern army sitting on this earth. And those little rice farmers ate them up, and their tanks, and everything else. Yes, they did, and France was deeply entrenched, had been there a hundred or more years. Now, if she couldn't stay there and was entrenched, why, you are out of your mind if you think Sam can get in over there. But we're not supposed to say that. If we say that, we're anti-American, or we're seditious, or we're subversive... They put Diem over there. Diem took all their money, all their war equipment and everything else, and got them trapped. Then they killed him. Yes, they killed him, murdered him in cold blood, him and his brother, Madame Nhu's husband, because they were embarrassed. They found out that they had made him strong and he was turning against them... You know, when the puppet starts talking back to the puppeteer, the puppeteer is in bad shape."

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

"You trust them (white Americans), and I don't. You studied what he wanted you to learn about him in schools. I studied him in the streets and in prison, where you see the truth."

"You don't stick a knife in a man's back nine inches and then pull it out six inches and say you're making progress... No matter how much respect, no matter how much recognition, whites show towards me, as far as I am concerned, as long as it is not shown to every one of our people in this country, it doesn't exist for me."

"You get freedom by letting your enemy know that you'll do anything to get your freedom; then you'll get it. It's the only way you'll get it."

"You?re not supposed to be so blind with patriotism that you can?t face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who says it."

"Zionist Israel's occupation of Arab Palestine has forced the Arab world to waste billions of precious dollars on armaments, making it impossible for these newly independent Arab nations to concentrate on strengthening the economies of their countries and elevate the living standard of their people."