Elijah Muhammad Quotes

I would rather take the role and work and make my own money and self respect than to have sex with someone who has a lot of money.

Dignity and plenty instead of humility and poverty.

Those who say nothing about their poverty will obtain more than those who turn beggars.

He that hath a trade hath an estate; and he that hath a calling hath a place of profit and honor. A ploughman on his legs is higher than a gentleman on his knees.

I would rather clean than beg.

It is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one's dignity, to work unhampered, to be generous, frank and independent.

But most distinctly, I remember always saying to myself that when I get big, I'm not going to go to bed hungry, I'm not going to wear hand-me-down clothes.

Without money honor is merely a disease.

To be obliged to beg our daily happiness from others bespeaks a more lamentable poverty than that of him who begs his daily bread.

How the sting of poverty, or small means, is gone when one keeps house for one's own comfort and not for the comfort of one's neighbors.

In order that she may be able to give her hand with dignity, she must be able to stand alone.

The old people we respect most are the ones who will fight for their independence, who would sooner starve to death than ask for help. We in America have very little sense of interdependence.

National pride is to countries what self-respect is to individuals—a necessary condition for self improvement.

Those who boast of friendship with us, they can really be our friend when they respect our independence, our soil and our prideful traditions.

The desperately poor may accept handouts, because they feel they have to. For those who consider themselves at least middle class, however, anything that smacks of a handout is not desired. Instead, they want their economic power back.

I would never allow anyone to give me money, no difference how badly I needed it. I wanted literally to earn my living.

Modesty is of no use to a beggar.

Most poor people I know are proud and really want not a handout but a hand up. They do have an inherent pride and dignity, and we should treat them as those who have fallen on bad days.

People around the world just want self-respect. They want to take care of themselves, they want to pay for their own bills, they want to take care of their families.

Nobody but a beggar chooses to depend chiefly upon the benevolence of his fellow-citizens.

You speak of poverty and dependence. Who are poor and dependent? Who are rich and independent? When was it that men agreed to respect the appearance and not the reality?

I want to earn my own way, I like having nice things but I've never accepted anything I haven't earned.

After you get your freedom, your enemy will respect you.

He who lives upon the fruit of his own labor, escapes the contempt of haughty benefactors.