Huey P. Newton Quotes

26 Sourced Quotes

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

Huey P. Newton
When a mechanic wants to fix a broken-down car engine, he must have the necessary tools to do the job. When the people move for liberation, they must have the basic tool of liberation: the gun.

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

Huey P. Newton
The prison cannot be victorious because walls, bars and guards cannot conquer or hold down an idea.

Huey P. Newton
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.

Huey P. Newton
Politics is merely the desire of individuals and groups to satisfy their basic needs first: food, shelter, and clothing and security for themselves and their loved ones.

Huey P. Newton
We Want Freedom. We Want Power to Determine the Destiny of Our Black Community. We believe that Black and oppressed people will not be free until we are able to determine our destinies in our own communities ourselves, by fully controlling all the institutions which exist in our communities.

Huey P. Newton
The oppressor must be harassed until his doom He must have no peace day or night. The slaves have always outnumbered the slavemasters. The power of the oppressor rests on the submission of the people.

Huey P. Newton
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 P. Newton
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 P. Newton
The terms "faggot" and "punk" should be deleted from our vocabulary, and especially we should not attach names normally designed for homosexuals to men who are enemies of the people.... Homosexuals are not enemies of the people.

Huey P. Newton
Men weren't created in order to obey laws. Laws were created to obey men.

Huey P. Newton
A people who have suffered so much for so long at the hands of a racist society must draw the line somewhere.

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

Huey P. Newton
You can kill my body, but you can't kill my soul. My soul will live forever!

Huey P. Newton
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.

Huey P. Newton
An unarmed people are slaves or are subject to slavery at any given moment.

Huey P. Newton
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 P. Newton
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 P. Newton
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
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.

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

Huey P. Newton
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
I suggested [in 1966] that we use the panther as our symbol and call our political vehicle the Black Panther Party. The panther is a fierce animal, but he will not attack until he is backed into a corner; then he will strike out.

Huey P. Newton