Quotes About Huey Newton

#1. The Black Panthers was what we would call today a criminal gang that was formed by Huey Newton. Now, interestingly enough, I knew Huey Newton before he formed the Black Panthers. He was a student of mine when I was a teacher, instructor at Oakland City College back in the very early 1960s.

Edwin Meese

#2. Usually, after a disagreement, they suggested i read this or that, often Marx, Lenin, or Engels. I preferred Ho Chi Minh, Kim Il Sung, Che, or Fidel, but i ended up having to get into Marx and Lenin just to understand a lot of the speeches and stuff Huey Newton was putting out.

Assata Shakur

#3. 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

#4. The United States is already antique.

Huey Newton

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

Huey Newton

#6. 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

#7. I think it's wrong for North America in particular, the West in general to make a comparison between the economic situation in Cuba and the extraordinarily developed industrial complex of North America.

Huey Newton

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

Huey P. Newton

#9. You can jail a Revolutionary, but you can't jail the Revolution.

Huey Newton

#10. 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

#11. 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

#12. 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

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

Huey Newton

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

Huey Newton

#15. 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

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

Huey Newton

#17. 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

#18. We always had a central committee. They were mesmerized by Eldridge Cleaver.

Huey Newton

#19. 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

#20. The neighbors were more than neighbors [on Cuba]. They were like part of the family.

Huey Newton

#21. 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

#22. 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

#23. 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.

Huey Newton

#24. 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

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

Huey Newton

#26. 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 Newton

#27. 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

#28. 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

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

Huey Newton

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

Huey Newton

#31. 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

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

Huey Newton

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

Huey Newton

#34. 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

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

Huey Newton

#36. 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

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

Huey Newton

#38. 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.

Huey Newton

#39. I'm sort of obsessed with Harlem. Just its history. My father did the music for a play called 'The Huey P. Newton Story,' and they did a lot of work in Harlem. So as a little girl, I spent a lot of time in Harlem Library.

Tessa Thompson

#40. 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

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

Huey Newton

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

Huey Newton

#43. 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.

Huey Newton

#44. 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

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

Huey Newton

#46. I don't want people to think he [Eldridge Cleaver] is so important - our party is important because our party works for the people and no individual is important in our party, including myself.

Huey Newton

#47. 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

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

Huey Newton

#49. I would like to add I'm innocent. I am not guilty.

Huey Newton

#50. 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

#51. 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

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

Huey Newton

#53. By surrendering my life to the revolution, I found eternal life

Huey Newton

#54. 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

#55. The rest of the Third World people are seeing, that the country can make a real change. No changing or trading one master for another. The only real change would be to socialize the means of production and this is what's happening in Jamaica.

Huey Newton

#56. 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

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

Huey Newton

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

Huey P. Newton

#59. We've got to face the fact that some people say you fight fire best with fire, but we say you put fire out best with water. We say you don't fight racism with racism. We're gonna fight racism with solidarity.

Fred Hampton

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

Huey Newton

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

Huey Newton

#62. 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

#63. When I was in the penitentiary after being accused of killing a policeman, I was more in the system in the penitentiary than ever.

Huey Newton

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

Huey Newton

#65. 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 .

Huey Newton

#66. 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

#67. If you stop struggling, then you stop life.

Huey Newton

#68. 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

#69. 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.

Huey Newton