In prison, those things withheld from and denied to the prisoner become precisely what he wants most of all.

If a man like Malcolm X could change and repudiate racism, if I myself and other former Muslims can change, if young whites can change, then there is hope for America.

History could pass for a scarlet text, its jot and title graven red in human blood.

You don't have to teach people how to be human. You have to teach them how to stop being inhuman.

The Twist was a guided missile launched from the ghetto into the heart of suburbia. The Twist succeeded, as politics, religion and law could never do, in writing in the heart and soul what the Supreme Court could only write on the books.