About NOI Study Guides: What is this course of study? The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan laid the foundation for this course in a powerful speech delivered on September 21, 1986. The following is an excerpt.

“What would profit us to build magnificent structures, beautiful buildings, magnificent bridges, built with magnificent technology, and the soul of those human beings are wretched and deprived and underdeveloped and rottening from within?”

-Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan
“Self-Improvement: The Basis for Community Development” speech, September 21, 1986, Phoenix, AZ

“It is not enough that we grow horizontally through the acquisition of farms, factories, banks, industry, trade, commerce, money, and good homes. Why? Because horizontal growth alone is death. All dead things are on a horizontal level. Therefore, we must grow vertically, grow in uprightness, or we will be overcome by our horizontal growth.”

~The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan
Introductory letter, dated December 12, 1986, to Self-Improvement: The Basis for Community Development (Study Guides 1-9), page xvii