Black Panther Party Quotes

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 ~ Huey P. Newton

Electoral politics was always an objective of the Black Panther party, so Barack Obama is a part of what we dreamed and struggled and died for. ~ Bobby Seale

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

By 1967, J. Edgar Hoover had concluded that the Black Panther Party had replaced the Communist Party as the gravest threat to national security. ~ Alexander Cockburn

I think because I came into journalism by way of the Black Panther Party - and not J-school or a corporate bourgeois institution - I tried to do news, writing and reporting that had social, political and racial content and context. ~ Mumia Abu-Jamal

Some of the free lunch programs were still goin' on - based on the last leg of the Black Panther Party. ~ Kool Moe Dee

Nobody could have possibly known that the FBI had sent a phony letter to Eldridge Cleaver in Algiers, 'signed' by the Panther 21, criticizing Huey Newton's leadership... no one could have known that the FBI's cointelpro was attempting to destroy the Black Panther Party in particular, and the Black Liberation movement in general, using divide-and-conquer tactics. ~ Assata Shakur

A small-time hoodlum who had spent most of the 1960s at San Quentin State Prison in California, the 30-year-old Bryant claimed that he hijacked Flight 97 under orders from his higher-ups in the Black Panther Party; he said his mission was to arrange for the purchase of bazookas to aid the organization's struggle against oppression. ~ Brendan I. Koerner

There is an entire generation of young people who know nothing about how viciously the FBI attacked The Black Panther Party, and why. ~ Bobby Seale

Being hungry is the hardest thing, & to this day I have prayers of gratitude for the Black Panthers, who made Breakfast for Children a thing that schools should do. We qualified for free lunch & breakfast, & without them I am almost sure we wouldn't have made it out of childhood alive despite my hardworking parents. ~ Patrisse Khan-Cullors

If they had not murdered Malcolm X, there probably never would have been a Black Panther Party. ~ Bobby Seale

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

The Black Panther Party was not a gang. They grew out of a young black intelligentsia on college campuses. ~ Bobby Seale

The Black Panther Party were not revenge nationalists. ~ Bobby Seale

Yes, we do defend our office as we do defend our homes. This is a constitutional right everybody has, and nothing's funny about that. The only reason they get mad at the Black Panther Party when you do it is for the simple reason that we're political. ~ Fred Hampton

I'm going to have to call up Spike Lee. I did a cameo for him in 'Malcolm X,' and I'm trying to get him to do my life story and the history of the Black Panther Party. ~ Bobby Seale

I think most people, when they think about the Black Panther Party, they think in very abstract, caricatured terms. They think about black fists in the air, but they don't think about the actual people, and the families, and the relationships. ~ Kerry Washington

You can't imagine hip-hop without the Black Panthers. Today, hopefully, the movement can be an inspiration to people. These were people who made mistakes but they were trying to change things. ~ Stanley Nelson Jr.

It was the Gypsy, the boy with the eyes of a hungry panther. He had removed his coat and waistcoat... and his necktie as well... so that his upper half was covered only in a thin white shirt that had been tucked loosely into the waist of his close-fitting trousers. The sight of him elicited the same reaction Daisy had felt upstairs- a swift sting in her chest followed by the rapid pumping of her heart. Paralyzed by the realization that she was alone in the room with him, Daisy watched with unblinking eyes as he approached her slowly.
She had never seen any living being who had been fashioned with such dark exotic beauty... his skin the color of raw clover honey, the light hazel of his eyes framed with heavy black lashes, his thick obsidian hair tumbled over his forehead. ~ Lisa Kleypas

I FLEW over the rooftops of the city, listened to some jazz at Preservation Hall, drank rainwater down in Pirate's Alley, ducked into a kitchen on Dauphine and Orleans and was fed by an old couple who was sure I was both tame and owned by a neighbor. It was the great thing about the city: nothing really surprised anyone. They expected to see things out of the ordinary. A black panther eating gumbo was normal. ~ Mary Calmes

I went to the railing and looked out over the sea. It had been fussing earlier in the day, but now it lay greasy and hushed. 'You got a tremendous prospect from up here, Brother Assembly.'

'Aye. Two evenings hence, for instance, I noted thy schooner passing westward. I also saw a cutter at the same time, a low and black-hulled cutter, British from the look of her, beating eastward beyond Vandyke's. She kept the island betwixt herself and thee, and sailed on into yon flat ugly yellow clouds.' He nodded to the east.

I got a crawly feeling between my shoulders, like I'd been hunting a panther and discovered it had been hunting me. 'Well, then,' I said, 'I guess I'd best be shoving off.'

'Tomorrow is the first of October. There have been no hurricanes yet this season worth mentioning, but a noteworthy one approaches now, thou mustn't doubt. Do not cling too tightly to ephemeral notions and worldly things, Brother, lest thou lose what thou most values.' He whistled an old Shaker hymn that was popular among the Brethren:
'Tis a gift to be simple,
'Tis a gift to be free,
'Tis a gift to come down
Where we ought to be...

I knocked on the railing, annoyed with myself for my superstitiousness but angrier with Assembly for baiting me. 'Of all the infernal meanness,' I said. 'Don't whistle for a wind in hurricane season!'

'Oh, as for that,' he said, the corners of his naked lip turning up just a little bit, ' ~ Broos Campbell

I am proud that my daughter believes, as I do, that hungry children should be fed whether they are Black Panthers or White Republicans ~ Tommy Douglas

A friend once told me a story about a former Black Panther leader in a Midwest community who in the 1960s had his phone tapped, while federal agents followed him everywhere. Forced to go underground, he later entered the drug trade & eventually got good at it. However, he told my friend, soon after this nobody kept tabs on him--he wasn't followed or harassed. He later became the number one drug dealer in the area. As he said this, my friend noted a breaking in his voice; the pain, perhaps, of being pushed away from being a committed community activist. ~ Luis J Rodriguez

The buzzard has nothing to fault himself with.
Scruples are alien to the black panther.
Piranhas do not doubt the rightness of their actions.
The rattlesnake approves of himself without reservations.
The self-critical jackal does not exist.
The locust, alligator, trichina, horsefly
live as they live and are glad of it.
The killer whale's heart weighs one hundred kilos
but in other respects it is light.
There is nothing more animal-like
than a clear conscience
on the third planet of the Sun. ~ Wislawa Szymborska

Growing up in Chicago, there was a very particular type of home that would display the black Jesus figure. It wasn't a radical home. You wouldn't find these in a Black Panther house. There's still a strong allegiance to Christianity. ~ Rashid Johnson

It bounded from the line of trees directly ahead. This was his first real sight of the spirit and the breath stuck in his throat. Its black fur rippled as muscles bunched, flexed and powered the sleek animal towards him. Front legs reached forward, claws extended to dig into the soft ground as its body compressed. Back arching upwards as the rear legs caught up with the front and gathered their strength, propelling the cat forward again. The panther ate up the ground between the forest and Zhou. As it closed, he could see the yellow iris surrounding the deep, black, circular pupil. Either side of its snout, whiskers sprouted, sensing the movement of air, and its mouth parted to reveal two, long, sharp canine teeth rising from its bottom jaw. ~ G.R. Matthews

You have a 45mm automatic pistol on your lap, and I have a 35mm camera on my lap, and my weapon is just as powerful as yours. (To Black Panther militant Eldridge Cleaver) ~ Gordon Parks

My mother was a woman. A black woman. A single mother. Raising two kids on her own. So she was dark skinned. Had short hair. Got no love from nobody except for a group called the Black Panthers. So that's why she was a Black Panther. ~ Tupac Shakur

What made me maddest was the media treatment of the BPP, which gave the impression that the Party was racist and violent. And it worked. The pigs would burst into a Panther office, shoot first, and ask questions later. The press always reported that the police had "uncovered" a large arsenal of weapons. Later, when the "arsenal" turned out to be a few legally registered rifles and shotguns, the press never printed a word. The same thing goes on today. ~ Assata Shakur

And then there is the black cat. Who has no other name than the Black Cat and who turned up almost a month ago. We did not realize he was going to be living here at first: he looked too well fed to be a stray, too old and jaunty to have been abandoned. He looked like a small panther, and he moved like a patch of night.

One day, in the summer, he was lurking about our ramshackle porch: eight or nine years old, at a guess, male, greenish-yellow of eye, very friendly, quite unperturbable. I assumed he belonged to a neighboring farmer or household.

I went away for a few weeks, to finish writing a book, and when I came home he was still on our porch, living in an old cat ben one of the children had found for him. He was, however, almost unrecognizable. Patches of fur had gone, and there were deep scratches on his gray skin. The tip of one ear was chewed away. There was a gash beneath one eye, s lice gone from one lip. He looked tired and thin. ~ Neil Gaiman

As for those deserters, malcontents, radicals, incendiaries, the civil and uncivil disobedients among the young, SDS, PLP, Weathermen I and Weathermen II, the revolutionary action movement, the Black United Front, Yippies, Hippies, Yahoos, Black Panthers, Lions and Tigers alike - I would swap the whole damn zoo for a single platoon of the kind of young Americans I saw in Vietnam. ~ Spiro T. Agnew

A black shadow dropped down into the circle. It was Bagheera the Black Panther, inky black all over, but with the panther markings showing up in certain lights like the pattern of watered silk. Everybody knew Bagheera, and nobody cared to cross his path, for he was as cunning as Tabaqui, as bold as the wild buffalo, and as reckless as the wounded elephant. But he had a voice as soft as wild honey dripping from a tree, and a skin softer than down. ~ Rudyard Kipling

I couldn't wait to be, you know, a Black Panther. Of course they wouldn't let me join. ~ David Alan Grier

There are threads of fiction intricately woven into our muscles. Fictional characters such as Superman, Black Panther, Wonder Woman etc., are birthed from something struggling to come alife from deep within us. ~ Nike Thaddeus

At the end of the world there lies a mountain so high it makes you dizzy even to think about it. It is as black as soot, as smooth as silk, terribly steep, and where there should be a bottom, there are only clouds. But high up on the peak stands the Hobgoblin's House, and it looks like this." And Snufkin drew a house in the sand.
"Hasn't it got any windows?" asked Sniff.
"No," said Snufkin, "and it hasn't got a door either, because the Hobgoblin always goes home by air riding on a black panther. He goes out every night and collects rubies in his hat."
"What did you say?" asked Sniff, with his eyes popping out of his head. "Rubies! Where does he get them from?"
"The Hobgoblin can change himself into anything he likes," Snufkin answered, "and then he can crawl under the ground and even down onto the sea bed where buried treasure lies. ~ Tove Jansson

Justus tried to make an objective assessment of Miguel. What was the big deal with him, anyway? So he was easy on the eyes. Actually that was an understatement; he was for female eyes, a virtual feast. He was a perfect physical specimen, and very sensual. He seemed to positively ooze sex and eroticism with his every move, look, and touch. Justus turned her head toward him to steal a glance at his profile, but he caught her looking at him.
His eyes were so arresting, they were a dark, fierce green, like beautiful shining emeralds. She also noticed flecks of gold laced through them, reminiscent of cat's eyes. Not any ordinary house cat, these were the eyes of a wild predator.
He was a panther; with his black hair and green eyes and the way he moved, so gracefully, yet with definite strength and agility. She sighed to herself, so much for her objectivity. ~ Amanda Bretz

We are fortunate to have such an esteemed filmmaker join the Marvel family. The talents Ryan [Coogler] showcased in his first two films easily made him our top choice to direct Black Panther. Many fans have waited a long time to see Black Panther in his own film, and with Ryan we know we've found the perfect director to bring T'Challa's story to life. ~ Kevin Feige

I always tried to raise money for the Black Panthers through business schemes. ~ Bobby Seale

It was darker than a pitch-black panther, covered in tar, eating black licorice at the very bottom of the deepest part of the Black Sea. ~ Lemony Snicket

I played, like, a year of piano until I learned the 'Pink Panther' theme. That was my goal. Once I was good enough, I quit. Now my music has to have some rock. ~ Jack Black

There,he reminds me of you." Shelby indicated a black panther stretched in a path of sunlight, calmly watching the river of people who passed by.
"Is that so?" Alan studied the cat. "Indolent? Subdued?"
Shelby let out her smoke-edged laugh. "Oh,no, Senator.Patient, brooding. And arrogant enough to believe this confinement is nothing he can't work with." Turning, she leaned back against the barrier to consider Alan as she had considered the panther. "He's taken stock of the situation,and decided he can pretty much have his own way as things are.I wonder..." Her brows drew together inn concentration. "I wonder just what he'd do if he were really crossed.He doesn't appear to have a temper. Cats usually don't until they're pushed too far just that one time, and then-they're deadly."
Alan gave her an odd smile before he took her hand to draw her toward the path again. "He normally sees that he's not often crossed."
Shelby tossed her head and met the smile with a bland look. "Let's go look at the monkeys.It always makes me think I'm sitting in the Senate Gallery."
"Nasty," he commented and tugged on her hair.
"I know.I couldn't help it." Briefly she rested her head on his shoulder as they walked. "I'm often not a nice person. Grant and I both seem to have inherited a streak of sarcasm-or maybe it's cynicism. ~ Nora Roberts

So for front-runners we have a black and a woman. It's like being made to choose between syphilis or having and old man crap on your face. I would do the country a favor and run myself but I couldn't deprive Hollywood of me for 4 years. ~ Zach Braff

Communism in America
In the early 1920's, fascism was undermining all vestiges of democracy in Europe and dictatorships were prevalent in most Latin American countries. Therefore, communism was considered by many as the best alternative for the working masses, and was embraced by many scholars, artists and authors, as a viable alternative form of political thinking. Many people in the Hollywood film industry became members of the "Communist Party of America," or at least they agreed with the communistic views and became what was called "fellow travelers." The Communist Party meetings were where people of like mind could gather and share ideas, as well as help each other with their budding careers.
The United States Government had other ideas and some of the most serious attacks on personal rights took place during these early years. Constitutional rights were thrown out of the window as some government officials took unlawful actions against foreign immigrants and labor leaders.
Being more tolerant politically, Mexico attracted many Americans who felt persecuted in the United States. Heading south of the border was a geographic cure that many of them embraced. ~ Hank Bracker

I already optioned a book called The Personal History of Rachel DuPree. I also like The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill. And I love all of Octavia Butler's books. She's created some very complicated black heroines with a variety of belief systems. There are many great books out there, but those are a few of the ones that stand out. ~ Viola Davis

Whenever we read a line of the Bible, we must say, Lord Jesus, let me contact You in the divine Word. Lord, You are the living Word. Without You as the living Word I can receive nothing as life from the written Word. Lord, I must contact You. Although You are so mysterious, I praise You that You have given me such a tangible Word. This Word is solid, concrete, and substantial. I thank You for the Word that I can read and pray with. Yet, Lord, what I need is not the letter in black and white, but You, the living Spirit. ~ Witness Lee

They had extemporized a verse made up of two insults about matters over which the victim had no control: the color of her skin and speculations on the sleeping habits of an adult, widely fitting in its incoherence. That they themselves were black, or that their own father had similarly relaxed habits was irrelevant. It was their contempt for their own blackness that gave the first insult it's teeth. They seem to have taken all of their smoothly cultivated ignorance, their exquisitely learned self-hatred, their elaborately designed hopelessness and sucked it all up into a fiery cone of scorn that had burned for ages in the hollows of their minds - cooled - and spilled over lips of outrage, consuming whatever was in its path. They danced a macabre ballet around the victim, whom, for their own sake, they were prepared to sacrifice to the flaming pit. ~ Toni Morrison

She was a failure. That's what she thought. She had come to the forest to see the world, but all she found was wretchedness. ~ Robert Beatty

When they got back in the Corvette, Gretel fished around in her shopping bad. "What is this?"
She had chosen a black tank suit, but somehow a pink bikini had wound up among her purchases.
"Don't be mad," Margot pleaded.
"I'm not wearing this." Gretel tossed the bikini back in the bag. All the same, she couldn't help but notice the fabric was the same exact shade as the palest climbing roses. The tint of seashells on a deserted beach, or the mouth of someone you might want to kiss. ~ Alice Hoffman

I have just one black and white photograph left of my mother when she was younger. She was 17 when it was taken and beautiful with wispy curls and eyes that shone like dark marbles. ~ Liz Murray

Think of the following event: A collection of hieratic persons (from Harvard or some such place) lecture birds on how to fly. Imagine bald males in their sixties, dressed in black robes, officiating in a form of English that is full of jargon, with equations here and there for good measure. The bird flies. Wonderful confirmation! They rush to the department of ornithology to write books, articles, and reports stating that the bird has obeyed them, an impeccable causal inference. The Harvard Department of Ornithology is now indispensable for bird flying. It will get government research funds for its contribution. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

She rode at the head of a shining line of black limos like the head raven in a convocation of black birds. Her husband had moved people, and, in so moving, had become their Lancelot Satterwhite, too. Something of him lived in them, was not hers, was now theirs. ~ Lauren Groff

This song ain't black or white and as far as I know it don't infringe on anyone's copyright. ~ George Harrison

Let's go join the Black Swan! ~ Shannon Messenger

Black is the color of celebration, the color of nights that never end... ~ Anne Berest

To anyone who had been there since the beginning it probably seemed even in December or January that the revolutionary period was ending; but when one came straight from England the aspect of Barcelona was something startling and overwhelming. It was the first time that I had ever been in a town where the working class was in the saddle. Practically every building of any size had been seized by the workers and was draped with red flags or with the red and black flag of the Anarchists; every wall was scrawled with the hammer and sickle and with the initials of the revolutionary parties; almost every church had been gutted and its images burnt. Churches here and there were being systematically demolished by gangs of workman. Every shop and cafe had an inscription saying that it had been collectivised;
even the bootblacks had been collectivized and their boxes painted red and black. Waiters and shop-walkers looked you in the
face and treated you as an equal. Servile and even ceremonial forms of speech had temporarily disappeared. Nobody said
'Sen~or' or 'Don' ort even 'Usted'; everyone called everyone else 'Comrade' or 'Thou', and said 'Salud!' instead of 'Buenos
dias'. Tipping had been forbidden by law since the time of Primo de Rivera; almost my first experience was receiving a lecture
from a hotel manager for trying to tip a lift-boy. There were no private motor-cars, they had all been commandeered, and the
trams and taxis and much of the other t ~ George Orwell

But sometimes it's the sunshine that frightens us more than the big black shadows. ~ Megan Hart

So suck it up, cream puff, and pour your black heart out, because you know I'm not going anywhere until I either see tears or your gooey marshmallow center. ~ Lorelei James

I think when you're trying to get a film together that's had a long gustation process before I came on board and was trying to get financed in various stages, sometimes you're trying to make it more friendly to the financial interests or the commercial interests of various parties. ~ Todd Haynes

But when you are used to white being the default, black isn't black unless it is clearly pointed out as such. ~ Reni Eddo-Lodge