487 Best Quotes From Huey P. Newton (Revolutionary Suicide)

1. I didn't get trained by the school system like other kids, and when I did concentrate on learning, my mind was cluttered and locked by the programming of the system.

2. “No one can say, ‘I have dropped out—I am no longer in the system. ’ When you’re in prison, you’re even closer to the system—you feel it more, and you might be in there for whatever reason. You don’t transform the system as an absolute thing. ”

3. “I would like to add—I’m innocent. I am not guilty. ”

4. Black power is giving power to people who have not had power to determine their destiny.

5. ...Our party is important because our party works for the people and no individual is important in our party, including myself.

6. You can run a freedom fighter around the country, but you can't run freedom fighting around the country.

7. “We always had a central committee. They were mesmerized by Eldridge Cleaver. ”

8. “Thus it is better to oppose the forces that would drive me to self-murder than to endure them. Although I risk the likelihood of death, there is at least the possibility, if not the”

9. We've never advocated violence; violence is inflicted upon us. But we do believe in self-defense for ourselves and for the black people.

10. “We love ourselves, our bodies, but we do not want to enslave any part of ourselves. ”

11. “I knew right there in prison that reading had changed forever

12. “The first lesson a revolutionary must learn is that he is a doomed man. ” – Huey P. Newton

13. “Too many so-called leaders of the movement have been made into celebrities and their revolutionary fervor destroyed by mass media. They become Hollywood objects and lose identification with the real issues. The task is to transform society; only the people can do that” ~ Huey Newton

14. “We have two evils to fight, capitalism and racism. We must destroy both racism and capitalism.” ~ Huey Newton

15. “The task is to transform society; only the people can do that – not heroes, not celebrities, not stars.” ~ Huey Newton

16. “As we all know, sometimes our first instinct is to want to hit a homosexual in the mouth and want a woman to be quiet. We want to hit a homosexual in the mouth because we're afraid we might be homosexual; and we want to hit the woman or shut her up because we're afraid that she might castrate us. The remedy is to gain security in ourselves and therefore have respect and feelings for all oppressed people.”

17. “Che and Mao were veterans of people’s wars, and they had worked out successful strategies for liberating their people. We read these men’s works because we saw them as kinsmen; the oppressor who had controlled them was controlling us, both directly and indirectly. We believed it was necessary to know how they gained their freedom in order to go about getting ours. However, we did not want merely to import ideas and strategies; we had to transform what we learned into principles and methods acceptable to the brothers on the block.”

18. Dreams of freedom aren’t insane

19. “The spirit of revolution will continue to grow within the prisons. I look forward to the time when all inmates will offer greater resistance by refusing to work as I did. Such a simple move would bring the machinery of the penal system to a halt.”

20. “There is an old African saying, “I am we.” If you met an African in ancient times and asked him who he was, he would reply, “I am we.” This is revolutionary suicide: I, we, all of us are the one and the multitude.”

21. “Some see our struggle as a symbol of the trend toward suicide among Blacks. Scholars and academics, in particular, have been quick to make this accusation. They fail to perceive differences. ”

22. “White America has seen to it that Black history has been suppressed in schools and in American history books. The bravery of hundreds of our ancestors who took part in slave rebellions has been lost in the mists of time, since plantation owners did their best to prevent any written accounts of uprisings.”

23. “I think what motivates people is not great hate, but great love for other people.” ~ Huey Newton

24. “He turned me off with his arrogance. I had come searching for something, and he scorned me because I did not already know what I was seeking. I could not understand what he was saying about ‘Afro-Americans. ’ The term was new to me. Dawson really put me down. ‘You know what an Afro-Cuban is?’ ‘Yes’ ‘You know what an Afro-Brazilian is?’ ‘Yes’ ‘Then why don’t you know what an Afro-American is?’ It may have been apparent to him, but not to me. But I was stilled interested. ”

25. “IQ tests are routinely used as weapons against Black people in particular and minority groups and poor people generally. Since we are taught to believe that the tests are infallible, they have become a self-fulfilling prophecy that cuts off our initiative and brainwashes us. ” – Huey P. Newton

26. “The first lesson a revolutionary must learn is that he is a doomed man.”

27. “Richard had a theory about intimate human relations. He saw non-possessive love as pure love, the only love, and possessive love as a mockery of pure love. Non-possessive love did not enslave or constrain the love object. ”

28. ...On the other hand, people who work hard and struggle and suffer much are victims of greed and indifference, losers. This insane reversal of values presses heavily on the black community .

29. “To recruit any sizeable number of street brothers, we would obviously have to do more than talk. We needed to give practical applications of our theory, show them that we were not afraid of weapons and not afraid of death. The way we finally won the brothers over was by patrolling the police with arms.”

30. “You can only die once, so do not die a thousand times worrying about it. ” – Huey P. Newton

31. “If you stop struggling, then you stop life. ” – Huey P. Newton

32. “No longer dependant on the things of the world, I felt really free for the first time in my life. In the past, I had been like my jailers. I had pursued the goals of capitalist America. Now I had a higher freedom.”

33. “James Baldwin has pointed out that the United States does not know what to do with its Black population now that they “are no longer a source of wealth, are no longer to be bought and sold and bred, like cattle. ” This country especially does not know what to do with its young Black men. ”

34. “We must ally ourselves with the oppressed communities of the world. We cannot make our stand as nationalists. We cannot even make our stand as internationalists. We must place our future hopes upon the philosophy of intercommunalism—philosophy which holds that the rise of imperialism in America transforms all other nations into oppressed communities. ”

35. “The nature of a panther is that he never attacks. But if anyone attacks or backs into a corner, the panther comes up to wipe that aggressor or that attacker out. ”

36. “My fear was not of death itself, but a death without meaning.”

37. We want power to determine the destiny of our black community

38. ...It's hard to get the masses of people to believe or accept that a socialist government will relieve them of most of the problems.

39. “Malcolm X was the first political person in this country that I really identified with. If he had lived and not been purged, I probably would have joined the Muslims. ” – Huey P. Newton

40. “We discussed Mao’s program, Cuba’s program, and all the others, but concluded that we could not follow any of them. Our unique situation required a unique program. Although the relationship between the oppressor and the oppressed is universal, forms of oppression vary. The ideas that mobilised the people of Cuba and China sprang from their own history and political structures. The practical parts of those programs could be carried out only under a certain kind of oppression. Our program had to deal with America.”

41. “The initial socioeconomic advantage, begotten by chattel slavery, was enforced by undaunted violence and the constant threat of more violence. ”

42. “We have to realize our black heritage in order to give us strength to move on and progress.”

43. “James Baldwin has pointed out that the United States does not know what to do with its Black population now that they “are no longer a source of wealth, are no longer to be bought and sold and bred, like cattle.” This country especially does not know what to do with its young Black men.”

44. “I’m not ruling. I never ruled. I have one vote, and I’m the leader of the Party. I’ve always had a vote on the central committee. I always had more influence than that one vote. I’ll admit that. ”

45. “I think it’s absurd to talk about – one time you were outside the system, now you are in the system – no, we fight, the cause of the fight is because the system is bad that we can’t get out of it.” ~ Huey Newton

46. “The people will win a new world. Yet, when I think of individuals in the revolution, I cannot predict their survival. Revolutionaries must accept this fact. ”

47. “When I began to read, a whole new world opened to me. I became interested in books. I still could not read very well, but each new book made it easier. I did not mind spending many hours, because reading was enjoyment, rather than work. When I reached this point, I accumulated books and read one after another. I did this all through my senior year in high school and the summer following. By the time I really knew my way through a book, I had graduated from high school.”

48. “You can jail a revolutionary, but you can’t jail the revolution. You can run a freedom fighter around the country, but you can’t run freedom fighting around the country. You can murder a liberator, but you can’t murder liberation. ”

49. “The nature of a panther is that he never attacks. But if anyone attacks or backs into a corner, the panther comes up to wipe that aggressor or that attacker out.”

50. IQ tests are routinely used as weapons against Black people in particular and minority groups and poor people generally. The tests are based on white middle-class standards, and when we score low on them, the results are used to justify the prejudice that we are inferior and unintelligent.

51. “I think the basis—the foundation—has already been laid for a society where people will work together and enjoy the wealth of the whole nation together. I think this will be accomplished because this is the theme of the revolutionary government’s program. ”

52. “I am very happy here in Cuba, but I feel I have work to do in the United States. It’s where I can identify with the total world struggle for socialism. But I think, as a North American, as a Black North American, I have certain understandings, certain contributions to make that are unique to the North American experience. ”

53. “Whatever your personal opinions and your insecurities about homosexuality and the various liberation movements among homosexuals and women (and I speak of the homosexuals and women as oppressed groups), we should try to unite with them in a revolutionary fashion.

54. “I had a lot of time, and the first year I was in prison, I tried to get the Party to stop the shooting, to stop the talk about the gun thing. ”

55. “The imperialistic or capitalistic system occupies areas. It occupies Vietnam now. They occupy them by sending soldiers there, by sending policeman there. The policemen or soldiers are only a gun in the establishments hand. They make the racist secure in his racism. The gun in the establishment's hand makes the establishment secure in its exploitation.”

56. “Black Power is giving power to people who have not had power to determine their destiny. ” – Huey P. Newton

57. “The first lesson a revolutionary must learn is that he is a doomed man. Unless he understands this, he does not grasp the essential meaning of his life. ”

58. I think what motivates people is not great hate, but great love for other people.

59. “Cuba was neo-colony of the United States and still suffers a blockade. So, therefore, the consumer goods and so forth, we don’t have here, especially when you leave the city areas it’s a spartan life. But what is impressive about it is what is coming about. It’s the future that all these socialists look forward to. ”

60. “[When we started patrolling the police] many community people could not believe at first that we had only their interest at heart. Nobody had ever given them any support or assistance when the police harassed them, but here we were, proud Black men, armed with guns and a knowledge of the law. Many citizens came right out of jail and into the party, and the statistics of murder and brutality by policemen in our communities fell sharply.”

61. “He felt that people should not be like cars or houses. No man should own a wife, nor should a wife own a husband, because ownership is predicated upon control, fences, barriers, constraints, and psychological tyranny. Nonpossessive love is based upon shared experiences and friendship; it is the kind of love we have for our bodies, for our thumb or foot. We love ourselves, our bodies, but we do not want to enslave any part of ourselves.”

62. I read 'Plato's Republic.' I read it through about five times until I could actually understand it.

63. “You can kill my body and you can take my life but you can never kill my soul. My soul will live forever.”

64. “I do not expect the White media to create positive Black male images. ”

65. “When you deal with a man, deal with his most valuable possession, his life. There’s play and there’s the deep flow. I like to take things to the deep flow of play, because everything is a game, serious and nonserious at the same time. So play life like it’s a game.” ~ Huey Newton

66. You can tell the tree by the fruit it bears. You see it what the organization is delivering as far as a concrete program. If the tree's fruit sours or grows brackish....-bury it and walk over it and plant new seeds.

67. “The survival programs are a necessary part of the revolutionary process, a means of bringing the people close to the transformation of society.”

68. “Blacks were working as hard as they could to become a part of the system; I could not relate to their goals. These brothers still believed in making it in the world. They talked about it loud and long, expressing the desire for families, houses, cars, and so forth. Even at that time I did not want those things. I wanted freedom, and possessions meant nonfreedom to me. ”

69. “The Cuban Revolutionary Government has been generous and very considerate to me and my family. I lived in Santa Clara for a few months because I wanted to work in the countryside and get to know the country better. ”

70. I have the people behind me and the people are my strength.

71. “I have the people behind me and the people are my strength.”

72. “I began to read. What I discovered in books led me to think, to question, to explore, and finally to redirect my life.”

73. I knew how to influence people, but it's really just one vote.

74. “Let us go on outdoing ourselves; a revolutionary man always transcends himself or otherwise he is not a revolutionary man, so we always do what we ask of ourselves or more than what we know we can do.” ~ Huey Newton

75. “My comrades on the block continued to resist that authority, and I felt that I could not let college pull me away, no matter how attractive education was. These brothers had the sense of harmony and communion I needed to maintain that part of myself not totally crushed by the schools and other authorities.”

76. “You can jail a Revolutionary, but you can't jail the Revolution.”

77. “Revolutionary suicide does not mean that I and my comrades have a death wish; it means just the opposite. ” – Huey P. Newton

78. “If you stop struggling, then you stop life.”

79. “I try to be cordial because that way, you win people over. You cannot win them over by drawing the line of demarcation, saying you are on this side, and I am on the other—that shows a lack of consciousness. ”

80. “The United States can hide behind a facade simply because it is sucking the blood of other people…The Third World people: Africa, Asia and Latin America.” ~ Huey Newton

81. “I]t is better to oppose the forces that would drive me to self-murder than to endure them. Although”

82. “By surrendering my life to the revolution, I found eternal life. ” – Huey P. Newton

83. “Sometimes if you want to get rid of the gun, you have to pick the gun up.” ~ Huey Newton

84. “You can only die once, so do not die a thousand times worrying about it.” ~ Huey Newton

85. “Power is the ability to define phenomena and make it act in a desired manner. ”

86. “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

87. “Whatever your personal opinions and your insecurities about homosexuality and the various liberation movements among homosexuals and women—and I speak of the homosexuals and women as oppressed groups—we should try to unite with them in a revolutionary fashion. ”

88. “The policemen or soldiers are only a gun in the establishment’s hand. They make the racist secure in his racism.” ~ Huey Newton

89. “Revolution is not an action; it is a process.”

90. “There is no disagreement about this function of law in any circle—the disagreement arises from the question of which men’s laws are to serve. Such lawmakers ignore the fact that it is the duty of the poor and unrepresented to construct rules and laws that serve their interest better. ”

91. “No longer dependent on the things of the world, I felt really free for the first time in my life. In the past, I had been like my jailers. I had pursued the goals of capitalistic America. Now, I had a higher freedom. ”

92. “I will fight until I die, however that may come. But whether I’m around or not to see it happen, I know that the transformation of society inevitably will manifest the true meaning of ‘all power to the people.'”

93. “White America has seen to it that Black history has been suppressed in schools and in American history books. The bravery of hundreds of our ancestors who took part in slave rebellions has been lost in the mists of time, since plantation owners did their best to prevent any written accounts of uprisings.” ~ Huey Newton

94. ...I wanted freedom and possessions meant nonfreedom to me.

95. The policemen or soldiers are only a gun in the establishment's hand. They make the racist secure in his racism.

96. “I don’t like to just talk of Africa, and south of the Sahara in general. No, I’ll talk about the Third World in general. I’ll like to say this – we in the United States would never believe that another form of government – I don’t care even if it’s against the racism, etc. – it is hard to get the masses of people to believe or accept that a socialist government will relieve them of most of the problems.” ~ Huey Newton Quotes

97. “My foes have called me bum, hoodlum, criminal. Some have even called me nigger. I imagine now they’ll at least have to call me Dr. Nigger. ”

98. Must be able to defend self

99. “It seemed as though most of the cats that we’d come up with just hadn’t made it,” he says. “Almost everybody was dead or in jail.” Many young Black men in our generation can say the same thing. Drugs, oppression, and despair take their toll. Survival is not a simple matter or something to be taken for granted.”

100. “I do not expect the white media to create positive black male images.”

101. You can only die once, so do not die a thousand times worrying about it.

102. “When you deal with a man, deal with his most valuable possession, his life. There’s play, and there’s the deep flow. I like to take things to the deep flow of play because everything is a game, serious and non-serious at the same time. So play life like it’s a game. ”

103. “You can jail a Revolutionary, but you can’t jail the Revolution.” ~ Huey Newton

104. Must be willing to die for the cause

105. “Survival is not a simple matter or something to be taken for granted. ”

106. “The oppressor cannot understand the simple fact that people want to be free. So, when a man resists oppression, they pass it off by calling him ‘crazy’ or ‘insane'”

107. “I dissuade Party members from putting down people who do not understand. Even people who are unenlightened and seemingly bourgeois should be answered in a polite way. Things should be explained to them as fully as possible. I was turned off by a person who did not want to talk to me because I was not important enough. Maurice just wanted to preach to the converted, who already agreed with him. I try to be cordial, because that way you win people over. You cannot win them over by drawing the line of demarcation, saying you are on this side and I am on the other; that shows a lack of consciousness. After the Black Panther Party was formed, I nearly fell into this error. I could not understand why people were blind to what I saw so clearly. Then I realized that their understanding had to be developed.”

108. “The whites are not only duped and used by the prison staff, but come to love their oppressors. Their dehumanisation is so thorough that they admire and identify with those who deprive them of their humanity.”

109. “There will be no prison which can hold our movement down.” ~ Huey Newton

110. “The clash of cultures in the classroom is essentially a class war, a socio-economic and racial warfare being waged on the battleground of our schools, with middle-class aspirating teachers provided with a powerful arsenal of half-truths, prejudices and rationalisations, arrayed against hopelessly outclassed working-class youngsters. This is an uneven balance, particularly since, like most battles, it comes under the guise of righteousness.” (quote from Kenneth Clark, ‘Dark Ghetto’)

111. “Direct and unconcealed brute force and violence—although clearly persisting in many quarters of society—are today less acceptable to an increasingly sophisticated public, a public significantly remote from the methods of social and economic control common to early America. ”

112. It's better to oppose the forces that would drive me to self-murder than to endure them.

113. “What I’m really trying to say is that I believed an armed insurrection could work. After I was shot and went to prison, that ended that illusion. I had time to think. ”

114. “When I became aware of the effect of the bills on my family, I wanted to be free of them. It was more than the bills that disturbed me, however. We were in an impoverished state, and I found it hard to understand how my father could work so hard yet have so little.”

115. “Any unarmed people are slaves or are subject to slavery at any given moment. ”

116. “Eldridge misunderstood the white radical movement. He exploited their alienation and encouraged young whites to think of themselves as “bad” Blacks, thus driving them ever further away from their own community. At the same time, he seduced young Blacks into picturing themselves as bohemian expatriates from middle-class “Babylon” (as he poetically but mistakenly analogized superindustrial America). So we became temporarily alien to the Black community, while the white radicals were plunged deeper into their peculiar identity crisis. Cleaver’s genius for political and cultural schizophrenia infected us all, Black and white, and the opportunity was missed for youth of both races to express and make concrete their authentic underlying solidarity and love. This still remains to be done.”

117. “The neighbors were more than neighbors on Cuba. They were like part of the family. ”

118. “That is often the way of the oppressor. He cannot understand the simple fact that people want to be free. So, when a man resists oppression, they pass it off by calling him ‘crazy’ or ‘insane.'” ― “Revolutionary Suicide” by Huey Newton.

119. “I met a traveller from an antique land

120. My fear was not of death itself, but a death without meaning.

121. “We had the base now on which to construct a potent social force in the country. But some of our leading comrades lacked the comprehensive ideology needed to analyse events and phenomena in a creative, dynamic way. We [formed the] Ideological Institute, which has succeeded in providing the comrades with an understanding of dialectical materialism. About three hundred brothers and sisters attend classes to study in depth the works of great Marxist thinkers and philosophers.”

122. “We became temporarily alien to the Black community, while the White radicals were plunged deeper into their peculiar identity crisis. Cleaver’s genius for political and cultural schizophrenia infected us all, Black and White, and the opportunity was missed for youth of both races to express and make concrete their authentic underlying solidarity and love. This still remains to be done. ”

123. “While life will always be filled with sound and fury, it can be more than a tale signifying nothing. ”

124. There will be no prison which can hold our movement down.

125. “When I founded the party in 1966, I had just turned 24.And each year, no, not each year, each day I live I’ve gained new experiences. Now the criticism is not to say the party did not play a positive part in those times, but, in order to be objective, we did not accomplish the things we set out to accomplish.” ~ Huey Newton

126. “Black power is giving power to people who have not had power to determine their destiny. ”

127. “Always, the rulers of an order, consistent with their own interests and solely of their own design, have employed what to them seemed to be the most optimal and efficient means of maintaining unquestioned social and economic advantage. ”

128. There is no need for the establishment to fear me. But it has every right to fear the people collectively- I am the one with the people.

129. “I dissuade Party members from putting down people who do not understand. Even people who are unenlightened and seemingly bourgeois should be answered in a polite way. Things should be explained to them as fully as possible. ”

130. “The nature of a panther is that he never attacks. But if anyone attacks or backs into a corner, the panther comes up to wipe that aggressor or that attacker out.” ~ Huey Newton

131. “Although I risk the likelihood of death, there is at least the possibility, if not the probability, of changing intolerable conditions. This possibility is important because much in human existence is based upon hope without any real understanding of the odds. ”

132. “I began to read. What I discovered in books led me to think to question, to explore, and finally redirect my life. ”

133. “My fear was not of death itself, but a death without meaning. ” – Huey P. Newton

134. The walls, the bars, the guns, and the guards can never encircle or hold down the idea of the people.

135. “Existence is violent, I exist, therefore I’m violent. . . in that way. ” ― Huey P. Newton

136. “My mother and my father have been married 50 years, and he’s just started to understand that something’s wrong with the system. He accepted the whole thing, you see. Yet, this industrious kind of engagement didn’t bring him the success, according to American terms, that he wanted. I was probably affected by this very much. In fact, I know I was. ”

137. Questions encouraged at Panther school

138. “I dissuade party members from putting down people who do not understand. Even people who are unenlightened and seemingly bourgeois should be answered in a polite way. Things should be explained to them as fully as possible. I was turned off by a person who did not want to talk to me because I was not important enough. After the Black Panther Party was formed, I nearly fell into this error. I could not understand why people were blind to what I saw so clearly. Then I realised that their understanding had to be developed.”

139. “When you deal with a man, deal with his most valuable possession, his life. There’s play and there’s the deep flow. I like to take things to the deep flow of play because everything is a game, serious and nonserious at the same time. So play life like it’s a game. ” – Huey P. Newton

140. “Cuba was neo-colony of the United States and still suffers a blockade. So, therefore, the consumer goods and so forth, we don’t have here, especially when you leave the city areas it’s a spartan life. But what is impressive about it is what is coming about. It’s the future that all these socialists look forward to.” ~ Huey Newton

141. Any unarmed people are slaves, or are subject to slavery at any given moment.

142. “Existence is violent, I exist, therefore I'm violent. . . in that way.”

143. “Power is the ability to define phenomena, and make it act in a desired manner.”

144. “I think one of the reasons why I, in particular, had so many fights was because I weighed only about 130 pounds. You got a lot of prestige from being able to fight the hefty guys, who first gained their reputation by downing lightweights like me. There were not many others as small as I was, who looked the big ones in the eye. I had an added disadvantage: all the way through school my baby face made people think I was younger than I was. I resented being treated like a baby, and to show them I was as “bad” as they were, I would fight at the drop of a hat. As soon as I saw a dude rearing up, I struck him before he struck me, but only when there was going to be a fight anyway. I struck first, because a fight usually did not last very long, and nine times out of ten the winner was the one who got in the first lick.”

145. “Clear-cut superiority in things social and economic—by whatever means—has been a scruples-free premise of American ruling class authority from the society’s inception to the present. ”

146. “The walls, the bars, the guns, and the guards can never encircle or hold down the idea of the people. ”

147. “Looking back, I see that my friends and I were all in the same boat—heading for hell on earth and trying to reach heaven in church. ”

148. ...I wanted most of all to before from the life of a servant forced to take those low-paying jobs and looked at with scorn by white bosses.

149. “It was almost like being on an urban plantation, a kind of modern-day sharecropping. You worked hard, brought in your crop, and you were always in debt to the landholder.”

150. “...After the Black Panther Party was formed, I nearly fell into this error, I could not understand why people were blind to what they saw so clearly. Then I realized that their understanding had to be developed.”

151. “The blood, sweat, tears, and suffering of Black people are the foundations of the wealth and power of the United States of America. We were forced to build America, and if forced to, we will tear it down. The immediate result of this destruction will be suffering and bloodshed. But the end result will be the perpetual peace for all mankind. ”

152. “I think the time is right for organizing and to give Blacks more political—the progressive Blacks, you have to make a distinction—participation, more Blacks in more authoritative positions, in more electoral political positions. But we want the right ones. ”

153. “Marriage, family, and debt; in a sense, another kind of slavery. ”

154. “Those in the community who defy authority and ‘break the law’ seem to enjoy the good life and have everything in the way of material possessions. On the other hand, people who work hard and struggle and suffer much are the victims of greed and indifference, losers. This insane reversal of values presses heavily on the Black community. The causes originate from outside and are imposed by a system that ruthlessly seeks its own rewards, no matter what the cost in wrecked human lives.”

155. “If we developed strong and meaningful alliances with white youth, they would support our goals and work against the establishment”

156. Bourgeois values define the family situation in America, give it certain goals. Oppressed and poor people who try to reach these goals fail because of the very conditions that the bourgeois has established.

157. “The racist dog policemen must withdraw immediately from our communities, cease their wanton murder, and brutality, and torture of Black people, or face the wrath of the armed people. ”

158. “We have to realize our black heritage in order to give us strength to move on and progress. But as far as returning to the old African culture, it's unnecessary and it's not advantageous in many respects. We believe that culture itself will not liberate us. We're going to need some stronger stuff.”

159. In the metaphysical sense, we based the expression,'All power to the people' on the idea of man as god. I have no other God but man and I finally believe that man is the highest or chief good.

160. “At an early age I made up my mind never to have bills when I grew up. I could not know then that this determination would extend eventually to the point of not being married or having a family of my own.”

161. “IQ tests are routinely used as weapons against Black people in particular, and minority groups, and poor people generally. The tests are based on White middle-class standards, and when we score low on them, the results are used to justify the prejudice that we are inferior and unintelligent. Since we are taught to believe that the tests are infallible, they have become a self-fulfilling prophecy that cuts off our initiative and brainwashes us. ”

162. “We [Panthers] have not said much about the homosexual at all, but we must relate to the homosexual movement because it is a real thing. And I know through reading, and through my life experience and observations that homosexuals are not given freedom and liberty by anyone in the society. They might be the most oppressed people in the society.”

163. “Black men and women who refuse to live under oppression are dangerous to white society because they become symbols of hope to their brothers and sisters, inspiring them to follow their example.”

164. “I think, generally speaking, both people are trying to be free from the abuses of the White racist North American authorities. I think that’s the one common denominator. The Cubans found a way to liberate themselves, and we haven’t found the way yet. So that’s the difference. ”

165. “My opinion is that the term “God” belongs to the realm of concepts, that it is dependent upon man for its existence. If God does not exist unless man exists, then man must be here to produce God. It”

166. “We have two evils to fight—capitalism and racism. We must destroy both racism and capitalism. ”

167. So play life like it's a game.

168. Newton For The Revolutionary In You

169. I'm not ruling. I never ruled. I have one vote and I'm the leader of the party... I always had more influence than that one vote. I'll admit that.

170. “Institutions work this way. A son is murdered by the police, and nothing is done. The institutions send the victim’s family on a merry-go-round, going from one agency to another, until they wear out and give up. this is a very effective way to beat down poor and oppressed people, who do not have the time to prosecute their cases. Time is money to poor people. To go to Sacramento means loss of a day’s pay – often a loss of job. If this is a democracy, obviously it is a bourgeois democracy limited to the middle and upper classes. Only they can afford to participate in it.” ~ Huey Newton

171. To die for the racists is lighter than a feather, but to die for the people is heavier than any mountain and deeper than any sea.

172. ...these brothers had the sense of harmony and communion I needed to maintain that part of myself not totally crushed by the schools and other authorities.

173. “I have the people behind me, and the people are my strength. ”

174. “That is often the way of the oppressor. He cannot understand the simple fact that people want to be free. So, when a man resists oppression, they pass it off by calling him “crazy” or “insane.”

175. “Any unarmed people are slaves, or are subject to slavery at any given moment.”

176. “My fear was not of death itself, but a death without meaning.” ~ Huey Newton

177. “Just before I left Cuba, I was about to transfer to the university. I had decided I had had enough experience in work in the manual areas. But then, I got word from the United States that I could return. That my Party had gathered enough information about the false charges that were against me for me to return to the United States. ”

178. “When reactionary forces crush us, we must move against these forces, even at the risk of death. We will have to be driven out with a stick. ”

179. “By surrendering my life to the revolution, I found eternal life” ~ Huey Newton

180. Black men and women who refuse to live under oppression are dangerous to white society because they become symbols of hope to their brothers and sisters, inspiring them to follow their example.

181. “It's better to oppose the forces that would drive me to self-murder than to endure them.”

182. “Malcolm X was the first political person in this country that I really identified with. If he had lived and not been purged, I probably would have joined the Muslims. ”

183. “One of the first things any Black child must learn is how to fight well.”

184. I knew right there that reading had changed forever the course of my life. As I see today, the ability to read awoke inside me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive....

185. “Malcolm X impressed me with his logic and with his disciplined and dedicated mind. Here was a man who combined the world of the streets and the world of the scholar, a man so widely read he could give better lectures and cite more evidence than many college professors. He was also practical. Dressed in the loose-fitting style of a strong prison man, he knew what the street brothers were like, and he knew what had to be done to reach them.”

186. “There is a very strong socialist movement in Jamaica. I was in Jamaica years ago. All the talk, all day they talk politics. The literacy rate is very low. Everyone is so interested in politics, more than those who can read in the United States.” ~ Huey Newton

187. “Those in the community who defy authority and ‘break the law’ seem to enjoy the good life and have everything in the way of material possessions. On the other hand, people who work hard, and struggle, and suffer much are the victims of greed and indifference, losers. This insane reversal of values presses heavily on the Black community. The causes originate from outside and are imposed by a system that ruthlessly seeks its own rewards, no matter what the cost in wrecked human lives. ”

188. Revolutions left to the youth

189. “Throughout my life all real learning has taken place outside school. I was educated by my family, my friends, and the street. Later, I learned to love books and I read a lot, but that had nothing to do with school. Long before, I was getting educated in unorthodox ways.”

190. “The state believes in the power of euphemism, that by putting pleasant name on a concentration camp they can change its objective characteristics. Prisons are referred to as ‘correctional facilities’ or ‘men’s colonies’, and so forth; to the name givers, prisoners become ‘clients’, as if the state of California were some vast advertising agency. But we who are prisoners know the truth; we call them penitentiaries and jails and refer to ourselves as convicts and inmates.”

191. “Bourgeois values define the family situation in America, give it certain goals. Oppressed and poor people who try to reach these goals fail because of the very conditions that the bourgeoisie has established. ”

192. The racist policemen must withdraw immediately from our communities cease their wanton murder and brutality and torture of black people, or face the wrath of the armed people.

193. To us power is, first of all, the ability to define phenomena and secondly the ability to make these phenomena act in a desired manner.

194. “We felt that the police needed a label, a label other than that fear image that they carried in the community. ”

195. “Sometimes if you want to get rid of the gun, you have to pick the gun up.”

196. “To us power is, first of all, the ability to define phenomena, and secondly the ability to make these phenomena act in a desired manner. ”

197. “Richard had a theory about intimate human relations. He saw nonpossessive love as pure love, the only love, and possessive love as a mockery of pure love. Nonpossessive love did not enslave or constrain the love object. ”

198. “I know sociologically that words—the power of the word—words stigmatize people. ”

199. “Existence is violent, I exist, therefore I’m violent. . . in that way.” ~ Huey Newton

200. “We must never take a stand just because it is popular. We must analyse the situation objectively and take the logically correct position, even though it may be unpopular. If we are right in the dialectics of the situation, our position will prevail.”

201. “The walls, the bars, the guns and the guards can never encircle or hold down the idea of the people.”

202. “In revolutionary love, we must make common cause with these oppressed communities. ”

203. “My opinion is that the term “God” belongs to the realm of concepts, that it is dependent upon man for its existence. If God does not exist unless man exists, then man must be here to produce God. It. ”

204. “The revolution has always been in the hands of the young. The young always inherit the revolution.” ― from a 1968 interview with The Movement.

205. “You can Jail a Revolutionary but you can’t jail the Revolution. You can run a freedom fighter around the country, but you can’t run freedom fighting around the country. You can murder a liberator, but you can’t murder liberation.” ~ Huey Newton

206. “The Cuban government wanted me to work in the university as a teacher in literature, but I declined because I wanted a more sense of the countryside. ”

207. “All my life, I had been looking for something, and everywhere I turned, someone tried to tell me what it was. I accepted their answers too, though they were often in contradiction and even self-contradictory. ”

208. “While life will always be filled with sound and fury, it can be more than a tale signifying nothing.”

209. “By surrendering my life to revolution, I found eternal life.”

210. “Giving a prisoner a number is another way of undermining his identity, one more step in the dehumanisation process. Of course, it has historical roots: the SS assigned numbers to prisoners in Nazi concentration camps during World War II”

211. “I don’t like to just talk of Africa and south of the Sahara in general. No, I’ll talk about the Third World in general. I’ll like to say this—we in the United States would never believe that another form of government—I don’t care even if it’s against the racism, etc. It is hard to get the masses of people to believe or accept that a socialist government will relieve them of most of the problems. ”

212. “My opinion is that the term ‘God’ belongs to the realm of concepts, that it is dependent upon man for its existence. If God does not exist unless man exists, then man must be here to produce God. ”

213. “This country especially does not know what to do with its young Black men. ”

214. “The street brothers were important to me, and I could not turn away from the life I shared with them. There was in them an intransigent hostility toward all sources of authority that had such a dehumanising effect on the community. In school the ‘system’ was the teacher, but on the block the system was everything that was not a positive part of the community.”

215. “I do not think that life will change for the better without an assault on the Establishment, which goes on exploiting the wretched of the earth. This belief lies at the heart of the concept of revolutionary suicide. Thus it is better to oppose the forces that would drive me to self-murder than to endure them. Although I risk the likelihood of death, there is at least the possibility, if not the probability, of changing intolerable conditions. This possibility is important, because much in human existence is based upon hope without any real understanding of the odds. Indeed, we are all—Black and white alike—ill in the same way, mortally ill. But before we die, how shall we live? I say with hope and dignity; and if premature death is the result, that death has a meaning reactionary suicide can never have. It is the price of self-respect.

216. “The United States can hide behind a facade simply because it is sucking the blood of other people. The Third World people—Africa, Asia, and Latin America. ”

217. “Marriage, family, and debt; in a sense, another kind of slavery. ” ― Huey P. Newton

218. “IQ tests are routinely used as weapons against Black people in particular and minority groups and poor people generally. The tests are based on white middle-class standards, and when we score low on them, the results are used to justify the prejudice that we are inferior and unintelligent. Since we are taught to believe that the tests are infallible, they have become a self-fulfilling prophecy that cuts off our initiative and brainwashes us.” ~ Huey Newton

219. “The behaviour of the police in China was a revelation to me. They are there to protect and help the people, not to oppress them. Their courtesy was genuine; no division or suspicion exists between them and the citizens.”

220. My fear was not death itself, but a death without meaning.

221. “Sometimes, if you want to get rid of the gun, you have to pick the gun up.”

222. “Misfortune is a test of people’s fidelity. Those who protest at injustice are people of true merit. ”

223. “Many white inmates are not outright racists when they get to prison, but the staff soon turns them in that direction. While the guards do not want racial hostility to erupt into violence between inmates, they do want hostility high enough to prevent any unity. This is something like the strategy used by southern politicians to pit poor whites against poor blacks.”

224. “You can kill my body, and you can take my life but you can never kill my soul. My soul will live forever!” ~ Huey Newton

225. There is an old African saying, 'I am we'. If you met an African in ancient times and them who he was, he would reply, 'I am we'. This is revolutionary suicide: I, we, all of us are the one and the multitude.

226. “Let us go on outdoing ourselves. A revolutionary man always transcends himself or otherwise he is not a revolutionary man, so we always do what we ask of ourselves or more than what we know we can do. ”

227. “You can kill my body, and you can take my life but you can never kill my soul. My soul will live forever!”

228. “When I was in the penitentiary after being accused of killing a policeman, I was more in the system in the penitentiary than ever. ”

229. “There’s no reason for the establishment to fear me. But it has every right to fear the people collectively—I am one with the people. ”

230. “You can tell the tree by the fruit it bears. You see it what the organization is delivering as far as a concrete program. If the tree's fruit sours or grows brackish....-bury it and walk over it and plant new seeds.”

231. “I would like to say that racial attitude and prejudice are probably here. It is very difficult to act this out—discrimination—discrimination is an act. After you have the prejudices, the discriminations come out, if there is an institution for it, but the Cubans have attempted to create institutions free of discrimination. ”

232. “I had a lot of time and the first year I was in prison, I tried to get the party to stop the shooting, to stop the talk about the gun thing.” ~ Huey Newton

233. I do not expect the white media to create positive black male images.

234. “I have no doubt that the revolution will triumph. The people of the world will prevail, seize power, seize the means of production, wipe out racism, capitalism. ”

235. “When people in the congregation prayed for each other, a feeling of community took over; they were involved in each other’s problems and trying to help solve them. Here was a microcosm of what ought to have been going on outside in the community. I had the first glimmer of what it means to have a unified goal that involves the whole community and calls forth the strengths of the people to make things better.”

236. If you stop struggling, then you stop life.

237. “During those long years in Oakland public schools, I did not have one teacher who taught me anything relevant to my own life or experience. Not one instructor ever awoke in me a desire to learn more or to question or to explore the worlds of literature, science, and history. All they did was try to rob me of the sense of my own uniqueness and worth, and in the process nearly killed my urge to inquire.”

238. No longer dependant on the things of the world, I felt really free for the first time in my life. In the past, I had been like my jailers. I had pursued the goals of capitalistic America. Now I had a higher freedom.

239. I began to read. What I discovered in books led me to think to question, to explore, and finally redirect my life.

240. “The revolution has always been in the hands of the young. The young always inherit the revolution.”

241. Misfortune is a test of people's fidelity. Those who protest at injustice are people of true merit.

242. “If you stop struggling, then you stop life. ”

243. “I began to think that Melvin’s approach through books was one way to examine these questions. His life required a certain amount of detachment from the community, and that was attractive to me. ”

244. “There's no reason for the establishment to fear me. But it has every right to fear the people collectively - I am one with the people.”

245. “Youths are passed through schools that don’t teach. Then forced to search for jobs that don’t exist and finally left stranded to stare at the glamorous lives advertised around them. ”

246. “The Chinese truly live by the slogan ‘political power grows out of the barrel of a gun,’ and their behaviour constantly reminds you of that. For the first time I did not feel threatened by a uniformed person with a weapon; the soldiers were there to protect the citizenry.”

247. “There will be no prison which can hold our movement down.”

248. “There will be no prison which can hold our movement down. ”

249. “There’s no reason for the establishment to fear me. But it has every right to fear the people collectively – I am one with the people.” ~ Huey Newton

250. The rest of the third world people are seeing, that the country can really make a change. No changing or trading one master for another.

251. The nature of a panther is that he never attacks. But if anyone attacks or backs into a corner, the panther comes up to wipe that aggressor or that attacker out.

252. “Eldridge misunderstood the White radical movement. He exploited their alienation and encouraged young Whites to think of themselves as ‘bad’ Blacks, thus, driving them ever further away from their own community. At the same time, he seduced young Blacks into picturing themselves as bohemian expatriates from middle-class ‘Babylon,’ as he poetically but mistakenly analogized super industrial America. ”

253. “You can kill my body, and you can take my life, but you can never kill my soul. My soul will live forever!”

254. “You can run a freedom fighter around the country, but you can't run freedom fighting around the country.”

255. “If you stop struggling, then you stop life.” ~ Huey Newton

256. “To die for the racists is lighter than a feather, but to die for the people is heavier than any mountain and deeper than any sea. ” – Huey P. Newton

257. “I wanted to leave high school in 1958 and join the Cuban revolution. So the only reason I did not come to join [Fidel] Castro was because my mother would not let me. I was only 16.” ~ Huey Newton

258. “What I’m really trying to say is that I believed an armed insurrection could work. After I was shot and went to prison, that ended that illusion. I had time to think.” ~ Huey Newton

259. “Youths are passed through schools that don’t teach, then forced to search for jobs that don’t exist and finally left stranded in the street to stare at the glamorous lives advertised around them.”

260. “The Black Panther Party is a revolutionary Nationalist group and we see a major contradiction between capitalism in this country and our interests. We realize that this country became very rich upon slavery and that slavery is capitalism in the extreme. ” – Huey P. Newton

261. “I think the basis – the foundation – has already been laid for a society where people will work together and enjoy the wealth of the whole nation together. I think this will be accomplished because this is the theme of the revolutionary government’s program.” ~ Huey Newton

262. ‎"revolutionary suicide does not mean that i and my comrades have a death wish; it means just the opposite. we have such a strong desire to live with hope and human dignity that existence without them is impossible. when reactionary forces crush us, we must move against these forces, even at the risk of death.

263. As we all know, sometimes our first instinct is to want to hit a homosexual in the mouth and want a woman to be quiet. We want to hit a homosexual in the mouth because we're afraid we might be homosexual; and we want to hit the woman or shut her up because we're afraid that she might castrate us. The remedy is to gain security in ourselves and therefore have respect and feelings for all oppressed people.

264. We have to realize our black heritage in order to give us strength to move on and progress.

265. “The great mass of arrested or accused black folk have no defence. There is desperate need of nationwide organisations to oppose this national racket of railroading to jails and chain gangs the poor, friendless and black.” (Quote from WEB DuBois)

266. ...After the Black Panther Party was formed, I nearly fell into this error, I could not understand why people were blind to what they saw so clearly. Then I realized that their understanding had to be developed.

267. “Black men and women who refuse to live under oppression are dangerous to white society because they become symbols of hope to their brothers and sisters, inspiring them to follow their example. ” ― Huey P. Newton

268. “I don’t want people to think he is so important—our Party is important because our Party works for the people, and no individual is important in our Party, including myself. ”

269. “Sometimes, if you want to get rid of the gun, you have to pick the gun up. ”

270. Existence is violent, I exist, therefore I'm violent. . . in that way.

271. “I have the people behind me and the people are my strength. ” – Huey P. Newton

272. “Laws should be made to serve the people. People should not be made to serve the laws.”

273. “You can only die once, so do not die a thousand times worrying about it. ”

274. “I expected to die. At no time before the trial did I expect to escape with my life. Yet being executed in the gas chamber did not necessarily mean defeat. It could be one more step to bring the community to a higher level of consciousness.” ~ Huey Newton

275. “He felt that people should not be like cars or houses. No man should own a wife, nor should a wife own a husband, because ownership is predicated upon control, fences, barriers, constraints, and psychological tyranny. ”

276. “I knew right there in prison that reading had changed forever the course of my life. As I see it today, the ability to read awoke inside me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive. My homemade education gave me, with every additional book I read, a little bit more sensitivity to the deafness, dumbness and blindness that was affecting the black race in America.” (quote from the Autobiography of Malcolm X)

277. “I wanted to leave high school in 1958 and join the Cuban revolution. So the only reason I did not come to join Castro was because my mother would not let me. I was only 16. ”

278. “Interested primarily in educating and revolutionising the community, we needed to get their attention and give them something to identify with.”

279. “Blacks were working as hard as they could to become a part of the system; I could not relate to their goals. These brothers still believed in making it in the world. They talked about it loud and long, expressing the desire for families, houses, cars, and so forth. Even at that time I did not want those things. I wanted freedom, and possessions meant nonfreedom to me.”

280. “The task is to transform society. Only the people can do that—not heroes, not celebrities, not stars. ”

281. “The most important element in controlling our own institutions would be to organise them into cooperatives, which would end all forms of exploitation. Then the profits, or surplus, from the co-operates would be returned to the community, expanding opportunities on all levels, and enriching life. Beyond this, our ultimate aim is to have various ethnic communities cooperating in a spirit of mutual aid, rather than competing. In this way, all communities would be allied in a common purpose through the major social, economy and political institutions in the country.”

282. The revolution has always been in the hands of the young. The young always inherit the revolution.

283. “The policemen or soldiers are only a gun in the establishment’s hand. They make the racist secure in his racism. ”

284. You can jail a revolutionary but you can't jail the revolution.

285. I expected to die. At no time before the trial did I expect to escape with my life. Yet being executed in the gas chamber did not necessarily mean defeat. It could be one more step to bring the community to a higher level of consciousness.

286. “By surrendering my life to the revolution, I found eternal life. ”

287. Newton Quotes on the Struggle for Liberation

288. “I wanted freedom, and possessions meant nonfreedom to me. ”

289. “The oppressor must be harassed until his doom. He must have no peace by day or by night. The slaves have always outnumbered the slavemasters. The power of the oppressor rests upon the submission of the people. ”

290. “I would like to say that racial attitude and prejudice are probably here…It is very difficult to act this out – discrimination – discrimination is an act. After you have the prejudices, the discriminations come out, if there is an institution for it but the Cubans have attempted to create institutions free of discrimination.” ~ Huey Newton

291. ...you can murder a liberator, but you can't murder liberation.

292. “During the five years since the Party had been formed, it always seemed that time was measured not in days or months or hours but by the movements of comrades and brothers in and out of prison and by the dates of hearings, releases, and trials. Our lives were regulated not by the ordinary tempo of daily events but by the forced clockwork of the judicial process (330)”

293. “Marriage, family, and debt; in a sense, another kind of slavery.”

294. “We [Panthers] have not said much about the homosexual at all, but we must relate to the homosexual movement because it is a real thing. And I know through reading, and through my life experience and observations that homosexuals are not given freedom and liberty by anyone in the society. They might be the most oppresed people in the society.” ~ Huey Newton

295. “We have not said much about the homosexual at all, but we must relate to the homosexual movement because it is a real thing, and I know through reading and through my life experience and observations that homosexuals are not given freedom and liberty by anyone in the society. They might be the most oppressed people in the society. ”

296. “Too many so-called leaders of the movement have been made into celebrities and their revolutionary fervour destroyed by mass media. The task is to transform society; only the people can do that – not heroes, not celebrities, not stars. A star’s place is in Hollywood; the revolutionary’s place is in the community with the people.”

297. The first book I ever really read was Plato‘s ‘Republic,’ and then I had to go over that five times or something

298. “All these programs were aimed at one goal: complete control of the institutions in the community. Every ethnic group has particular needs that they know and understand better than anybody else; each group is the best judge of how its institutions ought to affect the lives of its members. Throughout American history ethnic groups like the Irish and Italians have established organisations and institutions within their own communities. When they achieved this political control, they had the power to deal with their problems.”

299. “Many times the poorest White person is the most racist because he is afraid that he might lose something, or discover something he does not have. ”

300. “During those long years in Oakland public schools, I did not have one teacher who taught me anything relevant to my own life or experience. Not one instructor ever awoke in me a desire to learn more or to question or to explore the worlds of literature, science, and history. All they did was try to rob me of the sense of my own uniqueness and worth, and in the process nearly killed my urge to inquire.” ~ Huey Newton

301. “James Baldwin has pointed out that the United States does not know what to do with its Black population now that they ‘are no longer a source of wealth, are no longer to be bought and sold and bred, like cattle.’ This country especially does not know what to do with its young Black men. ‘It is not at all accidental,’ he says, ‘that the jails and the army and the needle claim so many.'”

302. “Institutions work this way—a son is murdered by the police, and nothing is done. The institutions send the victim’s family on a merry-go-round, going from one agency to another until they wear out and give up. This is a very effective way to beat down poor and oppressed people, who do not have the time to prosecute their cases. ”

303. We have two evils to fight, capitalism and racism. We must destroy both racism and capitalism.

304. “Laws should be made to serve the people. People should not be made to serve the laws. ”

305. “During those long years in Oakland public schools, I did not have one teacher who taught me anything relevant to my own life or experience.”

306. “My experiences in China reinforced my understanding of the revolutionary process and my belief in the necessity of making a concrete analysis of concrete conditions. The Chinese speak with great pride about their history and their revolution and mention often the invincible thoughts of Chairman Mao Tse-Tung. But they also tell you, ‘This was *our* revolution based upon a cornet analysis of concrete conditions, and we cannot direct you, only give you the principles. It is up to you to make the correct creative application.’ It was a strange yet exhilarating experience to have traveled thousands of miles, across continents, to hear their words. For this is what Bobby Seale and I had included in our own discussions five years earlier in Oakland, as we explored ways to survive the abuses of the capitalist system in the Black communities of America. Theory was not enough, we had said. We knew we had to act to bring about change. Without fully realising it then, we were following Mao’s belief that ‘if you want to know the theory and methods of revolution, you must take part in revolution. All genuine knowledge originates in direct experience.'”

307. I have no doubt that the revolution will triumph. The people of the world will prevail, seize power, seize the means of production, wipe out racism, capitalism.

308. “[I]t is better to oppose the forces that would drive me to self-murder than to endure them. Although I risk the likelihood of death, there is at least the possibility, if not the probability, of changing intolerable conditions. . . . Revolutionary suicide does not mean that I and my comrades have a death wish; it means just the opposite. We have such a strong desire to live with hope and human dignity that existence without them is impossible. When reactionary forces crush us, we move against these forces, even at the risk of death.”

309. The first lesson a revolutionary must learn is that he is a doomed man.

310. “Marriage, family, and debt—in a sense, another kind of slavery. ”

311. “I do not expect the white media to create positive black male images.” ~ Huey Newton

312. “I think what motivates people is not great hate, but great love for other people. ”

313. “We have to realize our black heritage in order to give us strength to move on and progress. But as far as returning to the old African culture, it’s unnecessary and it’s not advantageous in many respects. We believe that culture itself will not liberate us. We’re going to need some stronger stuff.” ~ Huey Newton

314. “The imperialistic or capitalistic system occupies areas. It occupies Vietnam now. They occupy them by sending soldiers there, by sending policeman there. ”

315. “Black men and women who refuse to live under oppression are dangerous to white society because they become symbols of hope to their brothers and sisters, inspiring them to follow their example.” ~ Huey Newton

316. “Youths are passed through schools that don’t teach, then forced to search for jobs that don’t exist and finally left stranded in the street to stare at the glamorous lives advertised around them.” ~ Huey Newton

317. “Revolutionary suicide does not mean that I and my comrades have a death wish; it means just the opposite. We have such a strong desire to live with hope and human dignity that existence without them is impossible. When reactionary forces crush us, we must move against these forces, even at the risk of death. We will have to be driven out with a stick.” ― “Revolutionary Suicide” by Huey Newton.

318. “Existence is violent, I exist, therefore, I’m violent in that way. ”

319. “This was how we grew up—in a close family with a proud, strong, protective father and a loving, joyful mother. No wonder we came to feel that all our needs—from religion to friendship to entertainment—were met within the family circle. There was no felt need for outside friends; we were such good friends with each other.”

320. “My fear was not of death itself, but a death without meaning. I wanted my death to be something the people could relate to, a basis for further mobilization of the community.” ~ Huey Newton

321. “Revolutionary suicide does not mean that I and my comrades have a death wish—it means just the opposite. We have such a strong desire to live with hope and human dignity that existence without them is impossible. ”

322. “The reactionary suicide is ‘wise,’ and the revolutionary suicide is a ‘fool. ’ A fool for the revolution in the way Paul meant when he spoke of being a ‘fool for Christ. ’ That foolishness can move mountains of oppression. It is our great leap and our commitment to the dead and the unborn. ”

323. “That is often the way of the oppressor. He cannot understand the simple fact that people want to be free. So, when a man resists oppression, they pass it off by calling him “crazy” or “insane. ”

324. “Huey coined the term “revolutionary suicide” to describe this phenomenon.”

325. “Institutions work this way. A son is murdered by the police, and nothing is done. The institutions send the victim's family on a merry-go-round, going from one agency to another, until they wear out and give up. this is a very effective way to beat down poor and oppressed people, who do not have the time to prosecute their cases. Time is money to poor people. To go to Sacramento means loss of a day's pay - often a loss of job. If this is a democracy, obviously it is a bourgeois democracy limited to the middle and upper classes. Only they can afford to participate in it.”

326. “Blacks are a colonised people used only for the benefit and profit of the power structure whenever it suits their purposes. After the Civil War, Blacks were kicked off plantations and had nowhere to go. For nearly one hundred years they were either unemployed or used for the most menial tasks, because industry preferred to use the labour of more acceptable immigrants – the Irish, the Italians and the Jews. However, when World War II started, Blacks were again employed – in factories and by industry – because, with the white male population off fighting, there was a labour shortage. But when that war ended, Blacks were once again kicked off ‘the plantation’ and left stranded with no place to go in an industrial society.”

327. “We’ve never advocated violence. Violence is inflicted upon us. But we do believe in self-defense for ourselves and for Black people. ”

328. We felt that the police needed a label, a label other than that fear image that they carried in the community.

329. For the people

330. “Power is the ability to define phenomena, and make it act in a desired manner.” ~ Huey Newton

331. “I think the time is right for organizing and to give Blacks more political – the progressive Blacks, you have to make a distinction – participation, more Blacks in more authoritative positions, in more electoral political positions. But we want the right ones.” ~ Huey Newton

332. “Institutions work this way. A son is murdered by the police, and nothing is done. The institutions send the victim’s family on a merry-go-round, going from one agency to another, until they wear out and give up. this is a very effective way to beat down poor and oppressed people, who do not have the time to prosecute their cases. Time is money to poor people. To go to Sacramento means loss of a day’s pay – often a loss of job. If this is a democracy, obviously it is a bourgeois democracy limited to the middle and upper classes. Only they can afford to participate in it.”

333. “You can tell the tree by the fruit it bears. You see it through what the organization is delivering as far as a concrete program. If the tree’s fruit sours or grows brackish, then the time has come to chop it down – bury it and walk over it and plant new seeds. ” – Huey P. Newton

334. “We have to realize our Black heritage in order to give us strength to move on and progress. But as far as returning to the old African culture, it’s unnecessary, and it’s not advantageous in many respects. We believe that culture itself will not liberate us. We’re going to need some stronger stuff. ”

335. “We came to an important realisation: books could only point in a general direction; the rest was up to us.”

336. “As far as I am concerned, the party is a living testament to Malcolm’s life work. I do not claim that the party has done what Malcolm would have done. Many others say that their programs are Malcolm’s program. We do not say this, but Malcolm’s spirit is in us

337. “The imperialistic or capitalistic system occupies areas. It occupies Vietnam now. They occupy them by sending soldiers there, by sending policeman there. The policemen or soldiers are only a gun in the establishments hand. They make the racist secure in his racism. The gun in the establishment’s hand makes the establishment secure in its exploitation.” ~ Huey Newton

338. “Looking back, I see that my friends and I were all in the same boat—heading for hell on earth and trying to reach heaven in church.”

339. “Those in the community who defy authority and ‘break the law’ seem to enjoy the good life and have everything in the way of material possessions. On the other hand, people who work hard and struggle and suffer much are the victims of greed and indifference, losers. This insane reversal of values presses heavily on the Black community. The causes originate from outside and are imposed by a system that ruthlessly seeks its own rewards, no matter what the cost in wrecked human lives.” ~ Huey Newton

340. “I knew right there in prison that reading had changed forever the course of my life. As I see it today, the ability to read awoke inside me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive. My homemade education gave me, with every additional book I read, a little bit more sensitivity to the deafness, dumbness, and blindness that was affecting the Black race in America. ”

341. ...Survival is not a simple matter or something to be taken for granted.

342. “I began to think that Melvin’s approach through books was one way to examine these questions. His life required a certain amount of detachment from the community, and that was attractive to me.”

343. “I wanted most of all to before from the life of a servant forced to take those low-paying jobs and looked at with scorn by White bosses. ”

344. “What I experienced in China was the sensation of freedom – as if a great weight had been lifted from my soul and I was able to be myself, without defence or pretence or the need for explanation. I felt absolutely free for the first time in my life – completely free among my fellow men. This experience of freedom had a profound effect on me, because it confirmed my belief that an oppressed people can be liberated if their leaders persevere in raising their consciousness and in struggling relentlessly against the oppressor.”

345. Marriage, family, and debt in a sense is another kind of slavery.

346. “I always said this, and the people think it’s a cute answer, but I say we have always been in the system, and that’s why we fight because we don’t like the system. We are trying to transform it. ”

347. “Mao and Fanon and Guevara all saw clearly that the people had been stripped of their birthright and their dignity, not by any philosophy or mere words, but at gunpoint. They had suffered a holdup by gangsters, and rape; for them, the only way to win freedom was to meet force with force. At bottom, this is a form of self-defence.”

348. “Revolutionary suicide does not mean that i and my comrades have a death wish; it means just the opposite. We have such a strong desire to live with hope and human dignity that existence without them is impossible. when reactionary forces crush us, we must move against these forces, even at the risk of death.”

349. “The revolution has always been in the hands of the young. The young always inherit the revolution.” ~ Huey Newton

350. “Any unarmed people are slaves, or are subject to slavery at any given moment.” ~ Huey Newton

351. “I have the people behind me and the people are my strength.” ~ Huey Newton

352. “The first lesson a revolutionary must learn is that he is a doomed man.” ―from Newton’s 1973 autobiography “Revolutionary Suicide.”

353. “Too many so-called leaders of the movement have been made into celebrities and their revolutionary fervor destroyed by mass media. They become Hollywood objects and lose identification with the real issues. ”

354. “It is better to oppose the forces that would drive me to self-murder than to endure them. ”

355. “Black Power is giving power to people who have not had power to determine their destiny.” ―from a 1968 interview with The Movement.

356. I dissuade Party members from putting down people who do not understand. Even people who are unenlightened and seemingly bourgeois should be answered in a polite way. Things should be explained to them as fully as possible. I was turned off by a person who did not want to talk to me because I was not important enough. Maurice just wanted to preach to the converted, who already agreed with him. I try to be cordial, because that way you win people over. You cannot win them over by drawing the line of demarcation, saying you are on this side and I am on the other; that shows a lack of consciousness. After the Black Panther Party was formed, I nearly fell into this error. I could not understand why people were blind to what I saw so clearly. Then I realized that their understanding had to be developed.

357. “A rather honored guest of the Cuban government, so I wouldn’t experience the problems. I think it would take a Black Cuban to really articulate this because I’m being treated in a very generous way. ”

358. “After the Black Panther Party was formed, I nearly fell into this error. I could not understand why people were blind to what I saw so clearly. Then, I realized that their understanding had to be developed. ”

359. My opinion is that the term 'God' belongs to the realm of concepts, that it is dependant upon man for its existence. If God does not exist unless man exists, then man must be here to produce God.

360. “To die for the racists is lighter than a feather, but to die for the people is heavier than any mountain and deeper than any sea.”

361. “Jumping off a bridge is not the same as moving to wipe out the overwhelming force of an oppressive army. When scholars call our actions suicidal, they should be logically consistent and describe all historical revolutionary movements in the same way. ”

362. “I do not think that life will change for the better without an assault on the Establishment, which goes on exploiting the wretched of the earth. This belief lies at the heart of the concept of revolutionary suicide. Thus it is better to oppose the forces that would drive me to self-murder than to endure them. Although I risk the likelihood of death, there is at least the possibility, if not the probability, of changing intolerable conditions. This possibility is important, because much in human existence is based upon hope without any real understanding of the odds. Indeed, we are all—Black and white alike—ill in the same way, mortally ill. But before we die, how shall we live? I say with hope and dignity, and if premature death is the result, that death has a meaning reactionary suicide can never have. It is the price of self-respect.

363. “No longer dependent on the things of the world, I felt really free for the first time in my life. In the past I had been like my jailers; I had pursued the goals of capitalistic America. Now I had a higher freedom.”

364. “There is a very strong socialist movement in Jamaica. I was in Jamaica years ago. All the talk, all day they talk politics. The literacy rate is very low. Everyone is so interested in politics, more than those who can read in the United States. ”

365. Sometimes if you want to get rid of the gun, you have to pick the gun up.

366. One of the first things any black child must learn is how to fight well.

367. You can kill my body and you can take my life but you can never kill my soul. My soul will live forever.

368. “You can only die once, so do not die a thousand times worrying about it.”

369. “The first lesson a revolutionary must learn is that he is a doomed man. Unless he understands this, he does not grasp the essential meaning of his life.”

370. “Time is money to poor people. To go to Sacramento means loss of a day’s pay—often a loss of job. If this is a democracy, obviously, it is a bourgeois democracy limited to the middle and upper classes. Only they can afford to participate in it. ”

371. “All my life I had been looking for something, and everywhere

372. “The policemen or soldiers are only a gun in the establishments hand. They make the racist secure in his racism.”

373. “While life will always be filled with sound and fury. It can be more than a tale signifying nothing. ”

374. “I say, ‘whatever your insecurities are’ because as we very well know, sometimes, our first instinct is to want to hit a homosexual in the mouth and want a woman to be quiet. We want to hit a homosexual in the mouth because we are afraid that we might be homosexual, and we want to hit the women, or shut her up because we are afraid that she might castrate us, or take the nuts that we might not have to start with. ”

375. We have such a strong desire to live with hope and human dignity that existence without them is impossible....even at the risk of death.

376. “In the discussion at Phi Beta Sigma, a social fraternity I joined for a while, I expressed my anger about society and white racism. The other told me that I sounded like a guy named Donald Warden who was preaching Blackness at the Berkley campus of the University of California. He was the head of an organization called the Afro-American Association.

377. Youths are passed through schools that don't teach. Then they are forced to search for jobs that don't exist and finally left stranded to stare at the glamorous lives advertised around them.

378. “The Breakfast for Children program was set up first. Other programs – clothing distribution centres, liberations schools, housing, prison projects, and medical centres – soon followed. We called them ‘survival programs pending revolution’, since we needed long-term programs and a disciplined organisation to carry them out. They were designed to help the people survive until their consciousness is raised, which is only the first step in the revolution to produce a new America. I frequently use the metaphor of the fact to describe the survival programs. A raft put into service during a disaster is not meant to change conditions but to help one get through a difficult time. During a flood the raft is a life-saving device, but it is only a means of getting to higher and safer ground.”

379. “But before we die, how shall we live? I say with hope and dignity; and if premature death is the result, that death has a meaning reactionary suicide can never have. It is the price of self-respect.”

380. By surrendering my life to revolution, I found eternal life.

381. “Power is the ability to define phenomena, and make it act in a desired manner. ” – Huey P. Newton

382. “Rewriting unjust laws is a basic human right and fundamental obligation. ”

383. “Black men and women who refuse to live under oppression are dangerous to White society because they become symbols of hope to their brothers and sisters, inspiring them to follow their example. ”

384. “It was my studying and reading in college that led me to become a socialist. The transformation from a nationalist to a socialist was a slow one, although i was around a lot of Marxists. I even attended a few meetings of the Progressive Labour Party, but nothing was happening there, just a lot of talk and dogmatism, unrelated to the world I knew. It was my life plus independent reading that made me a socialist – nothing else.”

385. “By surrendering my life to the revolution, I found eternal life”

386. “The rest of the Third World people are seeing that the country can really make a change. No changing or trading one master for another. ”

387. “I began to read. What I discovered in books led me to think, to question, to explore, and finally redirect my life.”

388. “I knew how to influence the people, but it’s really just one vote. But the Party is being handled in a very good way. ”

389. “All the hipsters with cars, clothes, and money had rejected the family relationship that I valued so highly.”

390. Power to the people

391. “I even bragged to my friends how good I felt about the whole matter. When they were at my apartment during times when there wasn’t any food to eat, I told them that even though I starved, my time was my own and I could do anything I wanted with it. I didn’t have a car then, because most of my money was spent on the apartment, food, and clothes. When friends asked me why I did not get a car, I told them it was because I did not want bills and that a car was not my main goal or desire. My purpose was to have as much leisure time as possible. I could have pulled bigger jobs and gotten more, but I did not want any status symbols. I wanted most of all to be free from the life of a servant forced to take those low-paying jobs and looked at with scorn by white bosses.”

392. “The racist policemen must withdraw immediately from our communities cease their wanton murder and brutality and torture of black people, or face the wrath of the armed people.”

393. “During those long years in Oakland public schools, I did not have one teacher who taught me anything relevant to my own life or experience. Not one instructor ever awoke in me a desire to learn more, or to question, or to explore the worlds of literature, science, and history. All they did was try to rob me of the sense of my own uniqueness and worth, and in the process nearly killed my urge to inquire. ”

394. “We were trying to increase the conflict that was already happening. We felt that we would take the conflict to so high a level that some change had to come. ”

395. “One of the first things any Black child must learn is how to fight well. ”

396. Assault on the Establishment

397. “Black Power is giving power to people who have not had power to determine their destiny.” ~ Huey Newton

398. “I do not think that life will change for the better without an assault on the Establishment, which goes on exploiting the wretched of the earth.” ~ Huey Newton

399. “The FBI was most disturbed by the Panthers’ survival programs providing community service. The popular free breakfast program, in which the Party provided free hot breakfasts to children in Black communities throughout the United States, was, as already noted, a particular thorn in the side of J. Edgar Hoover. Finding little to criticize about the program objectively, the Bureau decided to destroy it. ”

400. “The racist dog policemen must withdraw immediately from our communities, cease their wanton murder and brutality and torture of black people, or face the wrath of the armed people.” ~ Huey Newton

401. “I expected to die at no time before the trial did. I expect to escape with my life. Yet, being executed in the gas chamber did not necessarily mean defeat. It could be one more step to bring the community to a higher level of consciousness. ”

402. Ready to fight

403. “Many community people could not believe at first that we had only their interest at heart. Nobody had ever given them any support or assistance when the police harassed them, but here we were, proud Black men, armed with guns and a knowledge of the law. Many citizens came right out of jail and into the Party, and the statistics of murder and brutality by policemen in our communities fell sharply. ”

404. “Laws should be made to serve the people. People should not be made to serve the laws.” ~ Huey Newton

405. “There is an old African saying, ‘I am we. ’ If you met an African in ancient times and them who he was, he would reply, ‘I am we. ”

406. “The racist dog policemen must withdraw immediately from our communities, cease their wanton murder and brutality and torture of black people, or face the wrath of the armed people.”

407. “He maintains that the primary cause of suicide is not individual temperament but forces in the social environment. In other words, suicide is caused primarily by external factors, not internal ones.”

408. “Malcolm X’s life and accomplishments galvanised a generation of young Black people; he helped us take a great stride forward with a new sense of ourselves and our destiny. But meaningful as his life was, his death had great significance, too. A new militant spirit was born when Malcolm died. It was born of outrage and a unified Black consciousness, out of the sense of a task left undone.”

409. “I think what motivates people is not great hate, but great love for other people.”

410. “I think what motivates people is not great hate, but great love for other people. ” – Huey P. Newton

411. “We realized at a very early point in our development that revolution is a process. It is not a particular action, nor is it a conclusion. It is a process. ”

412. Looking back, I see that my friends and I were all in the same boat- heading for hell on earth and trying to reach heaven in church.

413. This country especially does not know what to do with its young Black men.

414. “...It's hard to get the masses of people to believe or accept that a socialist government will relieve them of most of the problems.”

415. “To die for the racists is lighter than a feather, but to die for the people is heavier than any mountain and deeper than any sea. ”

416. “The masses must be taught to understand the true function of prisons. Why do they exist in such numbers? What is the real underlying economic motive of crime? The people must learn that when one ‘offends’ the totalitarian state, it is patently not an offence against the people of that state, but an assault upon the privilege of the few.” (George Jackson, ‘Blood in my Eye’)

417. “Richard had a theory about intimate human relations. He saw nonpossessive love as pure love, the only love, and possessive love as a mockery of pure love. Nonpossessive love did not enslave or constrain the love object.”

418. “We must gain security in ourselves and therefore, have respect and feelings for all oppressed people. ”

419. “I always carried lawbooks in my car. Sometimes, when a policeman was harassing a citizen, I would stand off a little and read the relevant portions of the penal code in a loud voice to all within hearing distance. In doing this, we were helping to educate those who gathered to observe these incidents. If the policeman arrested the citizen and took him to the station, we would follow and immediately post bail. Many community people could not believe at first that we had only their interest at heart. Nobody had ever given them any support or assistance when the police harassed them, but here we were, proud Black men, armed with guns and a knowledge of the law. Many citizens came right out of jail and into the Party, and the statistics of murder and brutality by policemen in our communities fell sharply.” ― “Revolutionary Suicide” by Huey Newton.

420. “I always carried lawbooks in my car. Sometimes, when a policeman was harassing a citizen, I would stand off a little and read the relevant portions of the penal code in a loud voice to all within hearing distance. In doing this, we were helping to educate those who gathered to observe these incidents. If the policeman arrested the citizen and took him to the station, we would follow and immediately post bail. Many community people could not believe at first that we had only their interest at heart. Nobody had ever given them any support or assistance when the police harassed them, but here we were, proud Black men, armed with guns and a knowledge of the law. Many citizens came right out of jail and into the Party, and the statistics of murder and brutality by policemen in our communities fell sharply.”

421. “Laws should be made to serve the people. People should not be made to serve the laws.” ― from the book “To Die for the People: The Writings of Huey Newton.”

422. “Let us go on outdoing ourselves; a revolutionary man always transcends himself or otherwise he is not a revolutionary man, so we always do what we ask of ourselves or more than what we know we can do. ” – Huey P. Newton

423. “I didn’t get trained by the school system like other kids, and when I did concentrate on learning, my mind was cluttered and locked by the programming of the system. ”

424. “I know sociologically that words, the power of the word, words stigmatize people.” ~ Huey Newton

425. “In their quest for freedom and in their attempts to prevent the oppressor from stripping them of all the things they need to exist, the people see things as moving from A to B to C. They do not see things as moving from A to Z. ”

426. ... but you can't kill my soul. My soul will live forever! - Huey Newton

427. “I have often pondered the similarity between prison experience and the slave experience of Black people. Both systems involve exploitation: the slave received no compensation for the wealth he produced, and the prisoner is expected to produce marketable goods for what amounts to no compensation. Slavery and prison life share a compete lack of freedom of movement. The power of those in authority is total, and they expect deference from those under their domination. Just as in the days of slavery, constant surveillance and observation are part of the prison experience, and if inmates develop meaningful and revolutionary friendships among themselves, these ties are broken by institutional transfers, just as the slavemaster broke up families.”

428. “I think as a North American, as a Black North American, I have certain understandings – certain contributions – to make that are unique to the North American experience. ” – Huey P. Newton

429. “Misfortune is a test of people’s fidelity.

430. ....Time is money to poor people. To go to Sacramento means loss of a day's pay often a loss of a job. If this is a democracy, obviously it is a bourgeois democracy limited to the middle and upper classes. Only they can afford to participate.

431. I know sociologically that words, the power of the word, words stigmatize people.

432. Laws should not be made to serve the people. People should not be made to serve the laws.

433. “Just before I left [Cuba], I was about to transfer to the university. I had decided I had had enough experience in work in the manual areas. But then I got word from the United States that I could return…that my party had gathered enough information about the false charges that were against me for me to return to the United States.” ~ Huey Newton

434. “The reactionary suicide is ‘wise,’ and the revolutionary suicide is a ‘fool,’ a fool for the revolution in the way Paul meant when he spoke of being a ‘fool for Christ,’ That foolishness can move mountains of oppression; it is our great leap and our commitment to the dead and the unborn.” ~ Huey Newton

435. “I was naive. I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself questions which I, and only I, could answer. It took me a long time and much painful boomeranging of my expectations to achieve a realization everyone else appears to have been born with—that I am nobody but myself. ”

436. “Indeed, we are all—Black and White alike—ill in the same way, mortally ill. But before we die, how shall we live? I say with hope and dignity, and if premature death is the result, that death has a meaning reactionary suicide can never have. It is the price of self-respect. ”

437. “In the metaphysical sense, we based the expression, ‘All power to the people’ on the idea of man as god. I have no other God but man, and I finally believe that man is the highest or chief good. ”

438. “Bourgeois values define the family situation in America, give it certain goals. Oppressed and poor people who try to reach these goals fail because of the very conditions that the bourgeoisie has established.”

439. While life will always be filled with sound and fury, it can be more than a tale signifying nothing.

440. “To us power is, first of all, the ability to define phenomena, and secondly the ability to make these phenomena act in a desired manner.”

441. Whatever your personal opinions and your insecurities about homosexuality and the various liberation movements among homosexuals and women (and I speak of the homosexuals and women as oppressed groups), we should try to unite with them in a revolutionary fashion. I say whatever your insecurities are because as we very well know, sometimes our first instinct is to want to hit a homosexual in the mouth, and want a woman to be quiet. We want to hit a homosexual in the mouth because we are afraid that we might be homosexual; and we want to hit the women or shut her up because we are afraid that she might castrate us, or take the nuts that we might not have to start with. We must gain security in ourselves and therefore have respect and feelings for all oppressed people.

442. “Non-possessive love is based upon shared experiences and friendship. It is the kind of love we have for our bodies, for our thumb or foot. ”

443. “When I founded the Party in 1966, I had just turned 24, and each year, no, not each year, each day I live I’ve gained new experiences. Now, the criticism is not to say the Party did not play a positive part in those times, but, in order to be objective, we did not accomplish the things we set out to accomplish. ”

444. “But before we die, how shall we live? I say with hope and dignity; and if premature death is the result, that death has a meaning reactionary suicide can never have. It is the price of self-respect.” ~ Huey Newton

445. “To die for the racists is lighter than a feather, but to die for the people is heavier than any mountain and deeper than any sea.” ~ Huey Newton

446. Knew the law of the land

447. Existence is violent, I exist, therefore, I'm violent....in that way.

448. “Strong and positive influences in my life helped me escape the hopelessness that afflicts so many of my contemporaries. My father gave me a strong sense of pride and self-respect. By brother Melvin awakened in me the desire to learn, and because of him I began to read. What I discovered in books led me to think, to question, to explore and finally to redirect my life.”

449. “Revolutionary suicide does not mean that I and my comrades have a death wish; it means just the opposite.” ~ Huey Newton

450. “The revolution has always been in the hands of the young. The young always inherit the revolution. ” – Huey P. Newton

451. “My fear was not of death itself, but a death without meaning. I wanted my death to be something the people could relate to—a basis for further mobilization of the community. ”

452. “Any unarmed people are slaves, or are subject to slavery at any given moment. If the guns are taken out of the hands of the people and only the pigs have guns, then it’s off to the concentration camps, the gas chambers, or whatever the fascists in America come up with. One of the democratic rights of the United States, the Second Amendment to the Constitution, gives the people the right to bear arms. However, there is a greater right; the right of human dignity that gives all men the right to defend themselves.” ~ Huey Newton

453. “One of the first things any Black child must learn is how to fight well.”― “Revolutionary Suicide.”

454. “I do not think that life will change for the better without an assault on the establishment, which goes on exploiting the wretched of the earth. This belief lies at the heart of the concept of revolutionary suicide. ”

455. What I'm really trying to say is that I believed an armed insurrection could work. After I was shot and went to prison, that ended that illusion. I had time to think.

456. White America has seen to it that Black history has been suppressed in schools and in American history books. The bravery of hundreds of our ancestors who took part in slave rebellions has been lost in the mists of time....

457. “You can kill my body, and you can take my life but you can never kill my soul. My soul will live forever!” – Huey P. Newton

458. “‎"revolutionary suicide does not mean that i and my comrades have a death wish; it means just the opposite. we have such a strong desire to live with hope and human dignity that existence without them is impossible. when reactionary forces crush us, we must move against these forces, even at the risk of death.”

459. ...the remedy is to gain security in ourselves and therefore have respect and feelings for all oppressed people.

460. “The laws and rules which officials inflict upon poor people prevent them from functioning harmoniously in society. ”

461. revolutionary suicide does not mean that I and my comrades have a death wish; it means just the opposite.

462. “I always said this and the people think it’s a cute answer, but I say we have always been in the system and that’s why we fight because we don’t like the system. We are trying to transform it.” ~ Huey Newton

463. “The nature of a panther is that he never attacks. But if anyone attacks or backs into a corner, the panther comes up to wipe that aggressor or that attacker out. ” – Huey P. Newton

464. “We’ve never advocated violence; violence is inflicted upon us. But we do believe in self-defense for ourselves and for black people. ” – Huey P. Newton

465. “This street philosophy also crept into my academic work. The brothers were hostile toward the police because they were always brutalizing and intimidating us. So I began to study police science in school to learn more about the thinking of police and how to outmaneuver them. I learned how they conducted investigations.”

466. “The first lesson a revolutionary must learn is that he is a doomed man.” ~ Huey Newton

467. “Revolutionary suicide does not mean that I and my comrades have a death wish; it means just the opposite. We have such a strong desire to live with hope and human dignity that existence without them is impossible. When reactionary forces crush us, we must move against these forces, even at the risk of death. We will have to be driven out with a stick.”

468. “Black power is giving power to people who have not had power to determine their destiny.”

469. “We felt that the police needed a label, a label other than that fear image that they carried in the community. So we used the pig as the rather low-lifed animal in order to identify the police. And it worked.” ~ Huey Newton

470. “Youths are passed through schools that don’t teach. Then forced to search for jobs that don’t exist and finally left stranded to stare at the glamorous lives advertised around them.”

471. “Among the poor, social conditions and economic hardship frequently change marriage into a troubled and fragile relationship. A strong love between husband and wife can survive outside pressures, but that is rare. Marriage usually becomes one more imprisoning experience within the general prison of society.”

472. “We've never advocated violence; violence is inflicted upon us. But we do believe in self-defense for ourselves and for black people.”

473. “It is a fundamental assertion of this study that the majority society—in its fear-provoked zeal to maintain and assure its inequitable position in American society—flirted with and came dangerously close to total abandonment of the particular freedom upon which all others are ultimately dependent, the right to disagree. Moreover, it is an ancillary claim of this study that the danger has not yet passed. ”

474. “These brothers had the sense of harmony and communion I needed to maintain that part of myself not totally crushed by the schools and other authorities. ”

475. ...the gun in the establishment's hand makes the establishment secure in its exploitation.

476. “The revolution has always been in the hands of the young. The young always inherit the revolution. ”

477. “You can tell the tree by the fruit it bears. You see it through what the organization is delivering as far as a concrete program. If the tree’s fruit sours or grows brackish, then the time has come to chop it down—bury it, and walk over it, and plant new seeds. ”

478. “I worked in the mechanical factories repairing cement trucks. The Cuban government wanted me to work in the university as a teacher in literature, but I declined because I wanted a more sense of the countryside.” ~ Huey Newton

479. “We were trying to increase the conflict that was already happening… we felt that we would take the conflict to so high a level that some change had to come.” ~ Huey Newton

480. “Thus it is better to oppose the forces that would drive me to self-murder than to endure them. Although I risk the likelihood of death, there is at least the possibility, if not the probability, of changing intolerable conditions.”

481. “We have two evils to fight, capitalism and racism. We must destroy both racism and capitalism.”

482. “White America has seen to it that Black history has been suppressed in schools and in American history books. The bravery of hundreds of our ancestors who took part in slave rebellions has been lost in the mists of time since plantation owners did their best to prevent any written accounts of uprisings. ”

483. “Too many so-called leaders of the movement have been made into celebrities and their revolutionary fervor destroyed by mass media. They become Hollywood objects and lose identification with the real issues. The task is to transform society; only the people can do that”

484. “IQ tests are routinely used as weapons against Black people in particular and minority groups and poor people generally. The tests are based on white middle-class standards, and when we score low on them, the results are used to justify the prejudice that we are inferior and unintelligent. Since we are taught to believe that the tests are infallible, they have become a self-fulfilling prophecy that cuts off our initiative and brainwashes us.”

485. “The walls, the bars, the guns and the guards can never encircle or hold down the idea of the people.” ~ Huey Newton

486. “I think it’s absurd to talk about—one time you were outside the system, now you are in the system—no, we fight, the cause of the fight is because the system is bad that we can’t get out of it. ”

487. “Thus it is better to oppose the forces that would drive me to self-murder than to endure them. Although I risk the likelihood of death, there is at least the possibility, if not the probability, of changing intolerable conditions. ”