"If I am not what I’ve been told I am, then I’m not what you think I am."

"I was not a Negro. I was a Black man. And my country is not a country. It is a state of mind."

"The world is before you, and you need not take it, or suffer it, for what it is. You can also make it what it will be."

"American history is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful, and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it."

"Love him and let him love you. Do you think anything else under heaven really matters?"