Huey Newton famous quotes

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

#Hands #Revolution #Rebellion

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

#Destiny #People #Giving

You can jail a Revolutionary, but you can't jail the Revolution.
-- Huey Newton

#Jail #Revolution #Revolutionary

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

#Forever #Soul #Body

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

#Dog #Wrath #People

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

#Brother #Men #White

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

#People #Slavery #Moments

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

#Positive #Media #White

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

#Law #People #Made

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

#Ability

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

#Fate #Men #Political

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

#Hate #Real Love #Thinking

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

#Jobs #Giving Up #Mean

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

#Jobs #School #Youth

If you stop struggling, then you stop life.
-- Huey Newton

#Life #Failure #Struggle

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

#Fear #Politics

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

#People #Patriotism #No Fear

I have the people behind me and the people are my strength.
-- Huey Newton

#People #Patriotism #Behinds

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

#Fighting #Two #Racism

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

#Wall #Gun #Ideas

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

#Gun #Hands #Racism

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

#Gun #Want #Sometimes

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

#Patriotism #Movement #Prison

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

#Military #War #Gun

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

#Believe #Moving #Order

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

#Suicide #Self #Dignity

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

#Real #Media #Issues

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.
-- Huey Newton

#Real #Reading #People

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

#Wipe #Panthers #Come Up

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

#Worry #Thousand

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

#Teacher #School #Years

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

#Mean #Community #Patriotism

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

#Way #Violent #Existence

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

#Book #School #Uprising

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

#Believe #Cutting #Self

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

#Men #Games #Play

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

#Trying #Levels #Conflict

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

#Wise #Suicide #Moving

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

#Running #Country #Fighting

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

#Sea #People #Mountain

By surrendering my life to the revolution, I found eternal life
-- Huey Newton

#Revolution #Found #Eternal Life

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

#People #Community #Bases

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

#Taken #Men #Gun

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

#Good Life #Struggle #Hard Work

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

#Fear #Animal #Pigs