Black Panther Quotes

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 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

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

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 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

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

Being an actor myself I realize that all actors believe they are qualified to play any role. If you showed me a script with a black woman character I would tell you that I could do it. That is what we do. We act as if we are someone else. ~ Richard Masur

I preach darkness. I don't inspire hope - only shadows. It's up to you to find the light in my words. ~ Charles Lee

It doesn't surprise me that aspect of the black nationalist movement, the cultural side, has triumphed because that is the aspect of the movement that was most commodifiable and when we look at the commodification of blackness we're looking at a phenomenon that's very profitable and it's connection with the rise of a black middle class I think is very obvious. ~ Angela Davis

There's a black rose growing in your garden. ~ H.D.

Welcome to the real world, she said to me.
Condescendingly.
Take a seat.
Take your life.
Plot it out in black and white. ~ John Mayer

Banned and lionised by drunken cactuses,
eternally sanguine in black and white, raw like the majestic sex on her ruby red deathswoman mouth, silver-coated terror in her eyes. ~ Laura Gentile

Now we know that prophesies come to one generation and materialize in another. If ~ Daniel Black

Individual members of certain churches in black communities should protest when worship services become a platform for teaching anti-gay sentiments. Often individuals sit and listen to preachers raging against gay people and think the views expressed are amusing and outmoded, and dismiss them without challenge. But if homophobia is to be eradicated in black communities, such attitudes must be challenged. ~ Bell Hooks

My father, " she said, pronouncing it fadder, and Beverly saw that her dress had also changed. It had become a scabrous, peeling black. The cameo was a skull, its jaw hung in a diseased gape. "His name was Robert Gray, better known as Bob Gray, better known as Pennywise the Dancing Clown. Although that was not his name, either. But he did love his joke, my fadder. ~ Stephen King

...sexually exploited Black girls are not choosing to participate in the sex trade; they are in the traumatic throes of a "domino effect" of choices made for them. "Did they choose to grow up in poverty? ... Did they choose sexual abuse? Did they choose to get raped, some of them before they could walk? Did they choose to grow up in a world where women and girls are not safe?...As women and girls become more sexualized in the world, the more they are seen as property. ~ Monique W. Morris

There's an organic grocery store just off the highway exit. I can't remember the last time I went shopping for food." A smile glittered in his eyes. "I might have gone overboard."
I walked into the kitchen, with gleaming stainless-steel appliances, black granite countertops, and walnut cabinetry. Very masculine, very sleek. I went for the fridge first. Water bottles, spinach and arugula, mushrooms, gingerroot, Gorgonzola and feta cheeses, natural peanut butter, and milk on one side. Hot dogs, cold cuts, Coke, chocolate pudding cups, and canned whipped cream on the other. I tried to picture Patch pushing a shopping cart down the aisle, tossing in food as it pleased him. It was all I could do to keep a straight face. ~ Becca Fitzpatrick

Hispanic and African American neighborhoods had been targeted by the subprime lending industry: renters were lured into buying bad mortgages, and homeowners were encouraged to refinance under riskier terms. Then it all came crashing down. Between 2007 and 2010, the average white family experienced an 11 percent reduction in wealth, but the average black family lost 31 percent of its wealth. The average Hispanic family lost 44 percent. ~ Matthew Desmond

There's one." Roy reached over and pounded Bert in the leg. "Slug bug black, no hit backs." "Where?" "Right there." "That's a BMW." Bert smacked Roy twice. "Wrong car, double hit backs." "Can you guys quit this, please?" Tom looked ahead in the distance. "Oh God, no." "Here it is." The cabbie pointed to his right. "Largest Volkswagen dealership in Los Angeles." It was ugly. Real ugly. When ~ J.A. Konrath

Hidden away behind the closed doors of aristocratic and bourgeois privilege, concealed under those ultra-respectable masks of black frock coat and veil, the green glow of corruption flickers into sight, steadies, and spreads everywhere, fostered by Lorrain's horrified and complicitous gaze. This decadent detective is at one with the criminal he pursues, acknowledging openly that the representation of corruption is one of the most pleasurable forms that corruption can take. In this enterprise, art is the mask that both exposes and conceals culpability. ~ Jennifer Birkett

SOULS WITHIN Black or white we are all the same, When circumstances go wrong, Why does color have to take the blame, Knowing right from wrong has nothing to do with our skin, It's about our conscience, our heart and soul within, We all have the same emotions scream, laugh, cry, Strip us from the outside, look passed it, Please try! We are just people, Black and white, Look into our souls within, Please end this fight! ~ Marci Arguin

I think the invitation offered the non-black reader is to join us in this expression of our familiarity and via that joining, come to understand that when black people come together to celebrate and rejoice in black critical thinking, we do so not to exclude or to separate, but to participate more fully in world community. However, we must first be able to dialogue with one another, to give one another subject-to-subject recognition that is an act of resistance that is part of the decolonizing, anti-racist process. ~ Bell Hooks

What I'm asking is will watching The Discovery
Channel with my young black boy instead
of the news coverage of the riot funerals riot arrests
riot nothing changes riots be enough to keep him
from harm? ~ Jennifer Givhan

To hike out alone in the desert; to sleep on the valley floor on a night with no moon, in the pitch black, just listening to the boom of silence: you can't imagine what that's like. ~ Nicole Krauss

Sometimes during my set I invite volunteers up on stage to get speed-roasted and I'm worried that I may have hundreds of people rushing the stage all at once. Luckily I'm a black belt in karate and I can fend them off. ~ Jeff Ross

Liv, stop it!" hissed Mia. "You look like a lovelorn sheep!"
I gave a start. "As bad as that? Oh, that's terrible." I added - and I was to regret it in the course of the day - "If you see me looking like that again, give me a nudge or throw something at me. Promise?"
"With pleasure," said Mia, and three hours later, because she always kept her promises, I was black and blue around the ribs and had been hit by assorted flying objects: several chestnuts, a spoon, and a blueberry muffin. ~ Kerstin Gier

During our glorious year of 1974–5, while I was dithering over gravitational waves, and Stephen was leading our merged group in black hole research, Stephen himself had an insight even more radical than his discovery of Hawking radiation. He gave a compelling, almost airtight proof that, when a black hole forms and then subsequently evaporates away completely by emitting radiation, the information that went into the black hole cannot come back out. Information is inevitably lost.
This is radical because the laws of quantum physics insist unequivocally that information can never get totally lost. So, if Stephen was right, black holes violate a most fundamental quantum mechanical law.
How could this be? The black hole's evaporation is governed by the combined laws of quantum mechanics and general relativity - the ill-understood laws of quantum gravity; and so, Stephen reasoned, the fiery marriage of relativity and quantum physics must lead to information destruction.
The great majority of theoretical physicists find this conclusion abhorrent. They are highly sceptical. And so, for forty-four years they have struggled with this so-called information-loss paradox. It is a struggle well worth the effort and anguish that have gone into it, since this paradox is a powerful key for understanding the quantum gravity laws. Stephen himself, in 2003, found a way that information might escape during the hole's evaporation, but that did not quell theorists' struggles. Stephe ~ Stephen Hawking

Santa Claus was white and everything bad was black. The little ugly duckling was the black duck, and the black cat was the bad luck. And if I threaten you, I'm going to blackmail you.I said, 'Momma, why don't they call it 'whitemail'? They lie too.' ~ Muhammad Ali

Please stop," I said. "You're upsetting the black Santas. ~ John Green

I must warn you, my story isn't a pretty one: abductions, time-traveling dragons, the Order of the Black Fez, highly verbal cats, a secret invisible city, condescending robots (condescending means they talk to you like you're an Idiot; wait, is it condescending of me to explain what condescending means?), and that's just for starters. - Willa Snap ~ Richard Due

I see no reason for denying so fundamental an urge, ruin or no. It is more important to live the life one wishes to live, and to go down with it if necessary, quite contentedly, than to live more profitably but less happily. Yet to achieve content under sometimes adverse circumstances, requires first an adjustment within oneself, and this I had already made, and after that, a recognition that one is not unique in being obliged to toil and struggle and suffer. This is the simplest of all facts and the most difficult for the individual ego to accept. As I look back on those first difficult times at the Creek, when it seemed as though the actual labor was more than I could bear, and the making of a living on the grove impossible, it was old black Martha who drew aside a curtain and led me in to the company of all those who had loved the Creek and been tormented by it. ~ Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

It's not that I prefer black girls, but that's who I find myself relating to as a human being. I am also attracted to really ghetto girls, straight out the hood ... a thickey, a real 'pass the hot sauce' type girl. ~ Jon B.

I wear white or pale-blue shirts and black knit ties: They don't draw attention to me in any kind of peacockish way. ~ Charlie Siem

Even in 2012, if there's a black character in the movies or on television that's a professional, if we even hear about their backgrounds they're always 'up from the streets.' ~ Stephen Carter

She had a hand on his belt, ready to show him exactly what she had in mind for the night, when he lowered to his knees between her legs, his hands spanning her ribs. Nervousness had vanished from his expression, replaced by eyes that gimmered with tenderness and perhaps even a hint of joy. ~ Melissa Cutler

I like smudgy black eyes and pale lips for evening. Red lipstick looks great on other girls, but it's too much on me. ~ Saffron Aldridge

Burials in Cahokia could be astonishingly elaborate. In one, a man was buried on a bed of twenty thousand beads of shell. Nearby three people were buried at teh same time along with eight hundred arrowheads and a host of other objects. These were probably close relatives, sacrifieced at the death of the great man. Also nearby, more than fifty women between the ages of eighteen and twenty-three were interred, evidently strangled as part of a funeral ceremony. ~ Jake Page

The last thing I need is to morph into one of those people who's always wearing black and doodling guns and bombs on her notebook. ~ Lauren Oliver

He read The Lord of the Rings for what I'm estimating the millionth time, one of his greatest loves and greatest comforts since he'd first discovered it, back when he was nine and lost and lonely and his favorite librarian had said, Here, try this, and with one suggestion changed his life. Got through almost the whole trilogy, but then the line "and out of Far Harad black men like half-trolls" and he had to stop, his head and heart hurting too much. ~ Junot Diaz