Huey P Newton Quotes

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

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

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

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

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

If you stop struggling, then you stop life.

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

Huey was something else. Huey was out of sight. He knew how to do it. Huey was ten motherfuckers.

My opinion is that the term “God” belongs to the realm of concepts, that it is dependent upon man for its existence. If God does not exist unless man exists, then man must be here to produce God. It

Marriage, family, and debt; in a sense, another kind of slavery.

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. This belief lies at the heart of the concept of revolutionary suicide. Thus it is better to oppose the forces that would drive me to self-murder than to endure them. Although I risk the likelihood of death, there is at least the possibility, if not the probability, of changing intolerable conditions. This possibility is important, because much in human existence is based upon hope without any real understanding of the odds. Indeed, we are all—Black and white alike—ill in the same way, mortally ill. 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. Revolutionary suicide does not mean that I and my comrades have a death wish; it means just the opposite. We have such a strong desire to live with hope and human dignity that existence without them is impossible. When reactionary forces crush us, we must move against these forces, even at the risk of death. We will have to be driven out with a stick.

That is often the way of the oppressor. He cannot understand the simple fact that people want to be free. So, when a man resists oppression, they pass it off by calling him “crazy” or “insane.

I dissuade Party members from putting down people who do not understand. Even people who are unenlightened and seemingly bourgeois should be answered in a polite way. Things should be explained to them as fully as possible. I was turned off by a person who did not want to talk to me because I was not important enough. Maurice just wanted to preach to the converted, who already agreed with him. I try to be cordial, because that way you win people over. You cannot win them over by drawing the line of demarcation, saying you are on this side and I am on the other; that shows a lack of consciousness. After the Black Panther Party was formed, I nearly fell into this error. I could not understand why people were blind to what I saw so clearly. Then I realized that their understanding had to be developed.

Whatever your personal opinions and your insecurities about homosexuality and the various liberation movements among homosexuals and women (and I speak of the homosexuals and women as oppressed groups), we should try to unite with them in a revolutionary fashion. I say ”whatever your insecurities are” because as we very well know, sometimes our first instinct is to want to hit a homosexual in the mouth, and want a woman to be quiet. We want to hit a homosexual in the mouth because we are afraid that we might be homosexual; and we want to hit the women or shut her up because we are afraid that she might castrate us, or take the nuts that we might not have to start with. We must gain security in ourselves and therefore have respect and feelings for all oppressed people.

I always carried lawbooks in my car. Sometimes, when a policeman was harassing a citizen, I would stand off a little and read the relevant portions of the penal code in a loud voice to all within hearing distance. In doing this, we were helping to educate those who gathered to observe these incidents. If the policeman arrested the citizen and took him to the station, we would follow and immediately post bail. Many community people could not believe at first that we had only their interest at heart. Nobody had ever given them any support or assistance when the police harassed them, but here we were, proud Black men, armed with guns and a knowledge of the law. Many citizens came right out of jail and into the Party, and the statistics of murder and brutality by policemen in our communities fell sharply.

To us power is, first of all, the ability to define phenomena, and secondly the ability to make these phenomena act in a desired manner.

For law can be just or unjust. Dr. Huey P. Newton said, “The law must serve men; not men serve the law.” John Africa, founder of the MOVE Organization, said, “Just because it’s legal doesn’t make it right.

I]t is better to oppose the forces that would drive me to self-murder than to endure them. Although

While life will always be filled with sound and fury, it can be more than a tale signifying nothing.

I am enormously proud to be an American. I would say that the things that our corporate-controlled government has done at best are shameful and at worst genocidal-but there's an incredible and a permanent culture of resistance in this country that I'm very proud to be a part of. It's not the tradition of slave-owningfounding fathers, it's the tradition of the Frederick Douglasses, the Underground Railroads, the Chief Josephs, the Joe Hills, and the Huey P. Newtons. There's so much to be proud of when you're American that's hidden from you. The incredible courage and bravery of the union organizers in the late 1800's and early 1900's-that's amazing. People of get tricked into going overseas and fighting Uncle Sam's Wall Street wars, but these are people who knew what they were fighting for here at home. I think that that's so much more courageous and brave.

Richard had a theory about intimate human relations. He saw nonpossessive love as pure love, the only love, and possessive love as a mockery of pure love. Nonpossessive love did not enslave or constrain the love object.

Eldridge misunderstood the white radical movement. He exploited their alienation and encouraged young whites to think of themselves as “bad” Blacks, thus driving them ever further away from their own community. At the same time, he seduced young Blacks into picturing themselves as bohemian expatriates from middle-class “Babylon” (as he poetically but mistakenly analogized superindustrial America). So we became temporarily alien to the Black community, while the white radicals were plunged deeper into their peculiar identity crisis. Cleaver’s genius for political and cultural schizophrenia infected us all, Black and white, and the opportunity was missed for youth of both races to express and make concrete their authentic underlying solidarity and love. This still remains to be done.

All my life I had been looking for something, and everywhere I turned someone tried to tell me what it was. I accepted their answers too, though they were often in contradiction and even self-contradictory. I was naïve. I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself questions which I, and only I, could answer. It took me a long time and much painful boomeranging of my expectations to achieve a realization everyone else appears to have been born with: That I am nobody but myself. RALPH ELLISON, The Invisible Man

Looking back, I see that my friends and I were all in the same boat—heading for hell on earth and trying to reach heaven in church.

I knew right there in prison that reading had changed forever the course of my life. As I see it today, the ability to read awoke inside me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive. . . . My homemade education gave me, with every additional book I read, a little bit more sensitivity to the deafness, dumbness, and blindness that was affecting the black race in America. The Autobiography of Malcolm X

Bourgeois values define the family situation in America, give it certain goals. Oppressed and poor people who try to reach these goals fail because of the very conditions that the bourgeoisie has established.

Thus it is better to oppose the forces that would drive me to self-murder than to endure them. Although I risk the likelihood of death, there is at least the possibility, if not the probability, of changing intolerable conditions.

James Baldwin has pointed out that the United States does not know what to do with its Black population now that they “are no longer a source of wealth, are no longer to be bought and sold and bred, like cattle.” This country especially does not know what to do with its young Black men.

In the discussion at Phi Beta Sigma, a social fraternity I joined for a while, I expressed my anger about society and white racism. The other told me that I sounded like a guy named Donald Warden who was preaching Blackness at the Berkley campus of the University of California. He was the head of an organization called the Afro-American Association. I went to Berkley to find Warden and hear what he was saying. The first member I met, though, was Maurice Dawson, one of Warden’s tight partners. He turned me off with his arrogance. I had come searching for something, and he scorned me because I did not already know what I was seeking. I could not understand what he was saying about “Afro-Americans.” The term was new to me. Dawson really put me down. “You know what an Afro-Cucan is?” “Yes” “You know what an Afro-Brazilian is?” “Yes” “Then why don’t you know what an Afro-American is?” It may have been apparent to him, but not to me. But I was stilled interested. Maurice taught me a lesson that I try to apply to the Black Panther Party today. I dissuade Party members from putting down people who do not understand. Even people who are unenlightened and seemingly bourgeois should be answered in a polite way. Things should be explained to them as fully as possible. I was turned off by a person who did not want to talk to me because I was not important enough. Maurice just wanted to preach to the converted, who already agreed with him. I try to be cordial, because that way you win people over. You cannot win them over by drawing a line of demarcation, saying you are on this side and I am on the other; that shows a lack of consciousness. After the Black Panther Party was formed, I nearly feel into this error. I could not understand why people were blind to what I saw so clearly. Then I realized that their understanding had to be developed.

During the five years since the Party had been formed, it always seemed that time was measured not in days or months or hours but by the movements of comrades and brothers in and out of prison and by the dates of hearings, releases, and trials. Our lives were regulated not by the ordinary tempo of daily events but by the forced clockwork of the judicial process (330)

Blacks were working as hard as they could to become a part of the system; I could not relate to their goals. These brothers still believed in making it in the world. They talked about it loud and long, expressing the desire for families, houses, cars, and so forth. Even at that time I did not want those things. I wanted freedom, and possessions meant nonfreedom to me.

When I began to read, a whole new world opened to me. I became interested in books. I still could not read very well, but each new book made it easier. I did not mind spending many hours, because reading was enjoyment, rather than work. When I reached this point, I accumulated books and read one after another. I did this all through my senior year in high school and the summer following. By the time I really knew my way through a book, I had graduated from high school.

I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed: And on the pedestal these words appear: “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!” Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.

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

This was how we grew up—in a close family with a proud, strong, protective father and a loving, joyful mother. No wonder we came to feel that all our needs—from religion to friendship to entertainment—were met within the family circle. There was no felt need for outside friends; we were such good friends with each other.

One of the first things any Black child must learn is how to fight well.

It seemed as though most of the cats that we’d come up with just hadn’t made it,” he says. “Almost everybody was dead or in jail.” Many young Black men in our generation can say the same thing. Drugs, oppression, and despair take their toll. Survival is not a simple matter or something to be taken for granted.

I began to read. What I discovered in books led me to think, to question, to explore, and finally to redirect my life.

When I became aware of the effect of the bills on my family, I wanted to be free of them. It was more than the bills that disturbed me, however. We were in an impoverished state, and I found it hard to understand how my father could work so hard yet have so little.

At an early age I made up my mind never to have bills when I grew up. I could not know then that this determination would extend eventually to the point of not being married or having a family of my own.

I began to think that Melvin’s approach through books was one way to examine these questions. His life required a certain amount of detachment from the community, and that was attractive to me.

All the hipsters with cars, clothes, and money had rejected the family relationship that I valued so highly.

He felt that people should not be like cars or houses. No man should own a wife, nor should a wife own a husband, because ownership is predicated upon control, fences, barriers, constraints, and psychological tyranny. Nonpossessive love is based upon shared experiences and friendship; it is the kind of love we have for our bodies, for our thumb or foot. We love ourselves, our bodies, but we do not want to enslave any part of ourselves.

Misfortune is a test of people’s fidelity. Those who protest at injustice are people of true merit.

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.

Comment en est-on arrivé là? Comment le mouvement de libération gay, que Huey P. Newton, président des Black Panthers, avait cru “peut-être le plus révolutionnaire”....un mouvement dont les slogans étaient “Démolissons la famille, démolissons l’état” et “une armée d’amants ne peut pas perdre”...une collectivité qui envisageait une révolution totale des rôles de genre et de sexe, une nouvelle responsabilité sociale et communautaire….une communauté qui faisait face à la crise du SIDA avec une unité et une imagination sans limites...comment cette force radicale, vivante et créatrice a-t-elle (...) pu dégénérer en un groupe de couples racistes, refoulés, aisés, privatisés, prêts à sacrifier tout leur héritage juste pour se marier? Et échouer ?

So what I do today is for them [the young who inherit the revolution per Huey P. Newton]. Those I can lift up and cheer for, those who might find some inspiration from what I leave and be restored. Or ignited.

No longer dependent on the things of the world, I felt really free for the first time in my life. In the past I had been like my jailers; I had pursued the goals of capitalistic America. Now I had a higher freedom.

when genius is combined in a Black man with revolutionary passion and vision, the Establishment will cut him down.

While the early Christians succeeded in undermining the authority and confidence of their rulers and rising up out of slavery, the Afro-American experience has been just the opposite. Already a people in slavery, when Christianity was imposed upon them, the Blacks only assumed another burden, the tyranny of the future—the hope of heaven and the fear of hell. Christianity increased their sense of hopelessness. It also projected the idea of salvation and happiness into the afterlife, where God would reward them for all their sufferings on this earth. Justice would come later, in the Promised Land. The phrase “All Power to the People” was meant to turn this around, to convince Black people that their rewards were due in the present, that it was in their power to create a Promised Land here and now.

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.

It was hard work, but not in the sense of working at an ordinary job, with its deadly routine and sense of futility in performing empty labor. It was work that had profound significance for me; the very meaning of my life was in it, and it brought me closer to the people.

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 case. Time is money to poor people.

When we coined the expression “All Power to the People,” we had in mind emphasizing the word “Power,” for we recognize that the will to power is the basic drive of man. But it is incorrect to seek power over people. We have been subjected to the dehumanizing power of exploitation and racism for hundreds of years; and the Black community has its own will to power also. What we seek, however, is not power over people, but the power to control our own destiny.

It was almost like being on an urban plantation, a kind of modern-day sharecropping. You worked hard, brought in your crop, and you were always in debt to the landholder.

My comrades on the block continued to resist that authority, and I felt that I could not let college pull me away, no matter how attractive education was. These brothers had the sense of harmony and communion I needed to maintain that part of myself not totally crushed by the schools and other authorities.

I think one of the reasons why I, in particular, had so many fights was because I weighed only about 130 pounds. You got a lot of prestige from being able to fight the hefty guys, who first gained their reputation by downing lightweights like me. There were not many others as small as I was, who looked the big ones in the eye. I had an added disadvantage: all the way through school my baby face made people think I was younger than I was. I resented being treated like a baby, and to show them I was as “bad” as they were, I would fight at the drop of a hat. As soon as I saw a dude rearing up, I struck him before he struck me, but only when there was going to be a fight anyway. I struck first, because a fight usually did not last very long, and nine times out of ten the winner was the one who got in the first lick.

This street philosophy also crept into my academic work. The brothers were hostile toward the police because they were always brutalizing and intimidating us. So I began to study police science in school to learn more about the thinking of police and how to outmaneuver them. I learned how they conducted investigations.

I even bragged to my friends how good I felt about the whole matter. When they were at my apartment during times when there wasn’t any food to eat, I told them that even though I starved, my time was my own and I could do anything I wanted with it. I didn’t have a car then, because most of my money was spent on the apartment, food, and clothes. When friends asked me why I did not get a car, I told them it was because I did not want bills and that a car was not my main goal or desire. My purpose was to have as much leisure time as possible. I could have pulled bigger jobs and gotten more, but I did not want any status symbols. I wanted most of all to be free from the life of a servant forced to take those low-paying jobs and looked at with scorn by white bosses.

[I]t is better to oppose the forces that would drive me to self-murder than to endure them. Although I risk the likelihood of death, there is at least the possibility, if not the probability, of changing intolerable conditions. . . . Revolutionary suicide does not mean that I and my comrades have a death wish; it means just the opposite. We have such a strong desire to live with hope and human dignity that existence without them is impossible. When reactionary forces crush us, we move against these forces, even at the risk of death.

He maintains that the primary cause of suicide is not individual temperament but forces in the social environment. In other words, suicide is caused primarily by external factors, not internal ones.

Thus it is better to oppose the forces that would drive me to self-murder than to endure them. Although I risk the likelihood of death, there is at least the possibility, if not the

Revolutionary suicide does not mean that I and my comrades have a death wish; it means just the opposite. We have such a strong desire to live with hope and human dignity that existence without them is impossible. When reactionary forces crush us, we must move against these forces, even at the risk of death. We will have to be driven out with a stick.

Huey coined the term “revolutionary suicide” to describe this phenomenon.