Top 86 Quotes & Sayings by Huey Newton

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

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

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

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

If you stop struggling, then you stop life.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

The task is to transform society; only the people can do that - not heroes, not celebrities, not stars.

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

By surrendering my life to the revolution, I found eternal life

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.