Huey Newton
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.Collection: Time
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.Collection: Success
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.Collection: Fear
I think what motivates people is not great hate, but great love for other people.Collection: Great
Black Power is giving power to people who have not had power to determine their destiny.Collection: Power
My fear was not of death itself, but a death without meaning.Collection: Death
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.Collection: Learning
I do not expect the white media to create positive black male images.Collection: Positive
I have the people behind me and the people are my strength.Collection: Strength
The revolution has always been in the hands of the young. The young always inherit the revolution.
Sometimes if you want to get rid of the gun, you have to pick the gun up.
We've never advocated violence; violence is inflicted upon us. But we do believe in self-defense for ourselves and for black people.
We have two evils to fight, capitalism and racism. We must destroy both racism and capitalism.
The first lesson a revolutionary must learn is that he is a doomed man.
Any unarmed people are slaves, or are subject to slavery at any given moment.
If you stop struggling, then you stop life.
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 walls, the bars, the guns and the guards can never encircle or hold down the idea of the people.
There will be no prison which can hold our movement down.
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.
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.
The first book I ever really read was Plato's 'Republic,' and then I had to go over that five times or something.
The policemen or soldiers are only a gun in the establishments hand. They make the racist secure in his racism.
I read Plato's 'Republic.' I read it through about five times until I could actually understand it.
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.Collection: Jobs
The task is to transform society; only the people can do that - not heroes, not celebrities, not stars.Collection: Stars
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.Collection: Brother
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.Collection: Taken
Laws should be made to serve the people. People should not be made to serve the laws.Collection: Law
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.Collection: Jobs
Power is the ability to define phenomena, and make it act in a desired manner.Collection: Ability
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.Collection: Wipe
You can kill my body, and you can take my life but you can never kill my soul. My soul will live forever!Collection: Forever
You can only die once, so do not die a thousand times worrying about it.Collection: Worry
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.Collection: Book
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 thatCollection: Real
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.Collection: Dog
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.Collection: Party
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.Collection: Thinking
I would like to add I'm innocent. I am not guilty.Collection: Add
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 .Collection: Party
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.Collection: People
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.Collection: Party
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.Collection: Thinking
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.Collection: Trying
Revolutionary suicide does not mean that I and my comrades have a death wish; it means just the opposite.Collection: Suicide
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.Collection: Thinking
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 goverment - 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.Collection: Believe
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.Collection: Fighting
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.Collection: Teacher