On government in the mid-1990s:
We live under a mind-over-matter government. We don't mind because you just don't matter.
- To the Donald Marshall Inquiry, November, 1988.

On her description in the Ottawa Journal as the soft spoken Mrs. Best:
"I shall cherish that clipping for it will be the last time I am so described."
- Following her presentation to The Royal Commission on the Status of Women in 1968.

On Black History:
Black History lost, has been found: Strayed, has wandered back and Stolen, is being returned.
- From That Lonesome Road, Autobiography,1977

On Racism:
Slavery, which is just the mother of racism ... there is no difference between racism and slavery
- To the Donald Marshall Inquiry, November, 1988.

On her honorary Doctorate of Civil Laws from King's College:
I feel I haven't done anything that any other alumna wouldn't have done at the right time or place.
- King's Alumnae Magazine,1992

Best was also fond of reciting the words of those who influenced her, among them her mother and abolitionists Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison.

On the search for destiny:
Take the first right and go straight ahead
- Georgina Ashe Prevoe, Best's Mother

On power:
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them.
- Abolitionist Frederick Douglass

On slavery:
I do not wish to think or speak or write with moderation -- I am in earnest -- I will not equivocate -- I will not excuse -- I will not retreat a single inch -- AND I WILL BE HEARD..
- Abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison in the first edition of his newspaper The Liberator, 1831.

On Best's activism:
You are just a small voice crying in the wilderness, but keep crying.
- Manuel Zive, Halifax merchant, and one of the first businessmen to purchase advertising in Best's newspaper The Clarion, 1945.