Black Panthers 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.

New Rule: Democrats must get in touch with their inner asshole. I refer to the case of Van Jones, the man the Obama administration hired to find jobs for Americans in the new green industries. Seems like a smart thing to do in a recession, but Van Jones got fired because he got caught on tape saying Republicans are assholes. And they call it news!

Now, I know I'm supposed to be all reinjected with yes-we-can-fever after the big health-care speech, and it was a great speech--when Black Elvis gets jiggy with his teleprompter, there is none better. But here's the thing: Muhammad Ali also had a way with words, but it helped enormously that he could also punch guys in the face.

It bothers me that Obama didn't say a word in defense of Jones and basically fired him when Glenn Beck told him to. Just like dropped "end-of-life counseling" from health-care reform because Sarah Palin said it meant "death panels" on her Facebook page. Crazy morons make up things for Obama to do, and he does it.

Same thing with the speech to schools this week, where the president attempted merely to tell children to work hard and wash their hands, and Cracker Nation reacted as if he was trying to hire the Black Panthers to hand out grenades in homeroom. Of course, the White House immediately capitulated. "No students will be forced to view the speech" a White House spokesperson assured a panicked nation. Isn't that like admitting that the president might be doing somethi ~ Bill Maher

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

And now, in the season of the Radical Chic, the Black Panthers. ~ Tom Wolfe

Most people remember COINTELPRO from the days of the Black Panthers, Yippies, and other revolutionary groups who threatened our government during the civil rights movement and the Vietnam war. Sensing that these groups might incite American citizens into radical action, the FBI sent in agents to agitate members of these various groups, often pitting them against each other through various forms of subterfuge, such as blackmail.

It appears that the CIA, FBI, and NSA are now sending their goons into the metaphysical marketplace, making sure that people who think they are aspiring to higher and positively transformative things are, in reality, only becoming more self-indulgent, disconnected, and confused.

The biggest influx of these agents occurred during the blossoming of the "human potential" movement in the early '70s, through such institutions as Esalen. Legions of people threw away their protest banners and followed their bliss during a time when directly addressing the socio-political problems of the day was imperative.

Since then, the emphasis on personal development - and more recently, the You Create Your Own Reality movement - a significant segment of the population has been brainwashed into disdaining all socio-political issues. For what better way to disempower people than to have them focus on their personal evolution at the expense of their families, communities, and the countries they live in? ~ David Icke

A lot of people don't understand the Black Panthers Party's relationship with white mother country radicals. ~ Fred Hampton

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

I am a writer, a professional journalist with serious credentials in Crime, Craziness, and Politics. I have mingled with dangerous criminals and attended many trials ... from Hell's Angels, Black Panthers and Chicano street fighters to Roxanne Pulitzer and even Richard Nixon, back in the good old days before he was run out of the White House for fraud, perjury, graft, and criminal negligence. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

On Slavery: The saddest slap in the face is we have NO monument, no real statues or memorials, no special day of Atonement or Remembrance (NOT ONE), no thanks for 400+ years of free labor, forced servitude across the Trans-Atlantic, ass beatings, buying ourselves and families out of slavery, rape and plunder ... but everyone else has monuments, special museums, and even movies. This is what America thinks of black people, so-called black president and all, who has been largely silent on this subject ... we'll even celebrate Leprechauns, Easter Bunnies, and Secretary's Day before we acknowledge our history. ~ Brandi L. Bates

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

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

In college I studied '60s and '70s radicalism, student activism, forms of political violence, groups like the Weathermen, the Black Panthers, the Symbionese Liberation Army, the New Left. ~ Marisha Pessl

Not since the Black Panthers sailed into their Upper East Side tea party has there been so daffy an exercise in radical chic. ~ Camille Paglia

How happy he must be, this Hobgoblin," exclaimed Sniff.
"He isn't a bit," replied Snufkin, "and he won't be until he finds the King's Ruby. It's almost as big as the black panther's head, and to look into it is like looking at leaping flames. The Hobgoblin has looked for the King's Ruby on all the planets including Neptune
but he hasn't found it. Just now he has gone off to the moon to search in the craters, but he hasn't much hope of success, because in his heart of hearts the Hobgoblin believes that the King's Ruby lies in the sun, where he can never go because it is too hot. ~ Tove Jansson

Sergeant Pepper was dead. G.I. Joe lived on. George Bush was president, movies stars were dying from AIDS, kids were smoking crack in the ghettos and the suburbs, Muslims were blowing airliners from the skies, rap music ruled, and nobody cared much about the Movement anymore. It was a dry and dusty thing, like the air in the graves of Hendrix, Joplin, and God. She was letting her thoughts take her into treacherous territory, and the thoughts threatened her smiley face. She stopped thinking about the dead heroes, the burning breed who made the bombs full of roofing nails and planted them in corporate boardrooms and National Guard Armories. She stopped thinking before the awful sadness crushed her.

The sixties were dead. The survivors limped on, growing suits and neckties and potbellies, going bald and telling their children not to listen to that satanic heavy metal. The clock of the Age of Aquarius had turned, hippies and yippies had become preppies and yuppies. The Chicago Seven were old men. The Black Panthers had turned gray. The Grateful Dead were on MTV, and the Airplane had become a Top-40 Starship.

Mary Terror closed her eyes, and thought she heard the noise of wind whistling through the ruins. ~ Robert R. McCammon

The rise of the antiwar and civil rights movements, along with the emergence of radical groups such as the Black Panthers, the Black Liberation Army, the Puerto Rican independence movement, and the American Indian movement, saw a return to systematized abuse within the prison system. ~ Chris Hedges

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

In its attempt to crush the Black Panthers, the FBI engineered frequent arrests on the flimsiest of pretexts. ~ Alexander Cockburn

It takes so much effort to get close to someone. To navigate those finely woven threads of doubt and trust. But sometimes... sometimes you need someone else. ~ Nathan Edmondson

It is only an island of light surrounded by a vastly greater area of greyness and that fades ultimately into the black of ignorance. ~ George R R Martin

Some of us are happy with our African hair, thank you very much. I don't want some poor Indian girl's hair. And I wish to God I could buy black hair products from black people for once. How we going to make it in this country if we don't make our own business? ~ Zadie Smith

Black holes mean oblivion. Mean death.
And Hawking has been staring at death all his adult life. Hawking could see. ~ Martin Amis

He smiles so much, I don't think he has a central nervous system. ~ Lewis Black

In bed, I steal moments of tenderness when sex has finally exhausted me to the point where I'm too bone weary to fret anymore about the enormous capacity for evil that's taken up squatter's rights inside me. I touch him, put all those things I don't say into my hands as I trace the red and black tattoos on his skin, the sharp planes and hollows of his face, bury my hands in his dark hair. He watches me in silence when I do, eyes dark, unfathomable.
I sometimes wake up to find he's pulled me close to him and is holding me, spooned into my back with his face in my hair, and those hands that don't speak like mine don't speak move over my skin and tell me I'm cherished, honored, seen. ~ Karen Marie Moning

After Arthur sent me away for my own good, it' like my life switched from color to black and white--like the ending of The Wizard of Oz. ~ Nick Nolan

I can make you feel, and I can scare you for real.

-Misty Lee ~ Misty Lee

The taxi driver felt that it was a good observation, and said he was planning to build for the future, too: he had some money on the horses, and if he won, he would buy his own taxicab, and really do well.
I felt very sorry. I told him that betting on the horses was a bad idea, but he insisted it was the only way he could do it. He had such good intentions, but his method was going to be luck.
I wasn't going to go on philosophizing, so he took me to a place where there was a steel band playing some great calypso music, and I had an enjoyable afternoon. ~ Richard Feynman

I accept you, and you get the same respect from me whether you are black, white, gay straight, Asian, bisexual, Australian, tall, fat, whatever it is. We are all people, and I look at the people of the world the same way, as my brothers and sisters. ~ Nash Grier

I was in Paris last year, where there's a great appreciation of many different aspects of African culture and of black culture. The music ... the art ... whatever ... And I kind of went with that. ~ Lenny Kravitz

Oh- and grab the plastic bag over by my suitcase."
I slug down the last of the coffee and get up. The bag contains panty hose. I put them on her desk.
"They're for you."
"You want me to look homeless, desperate, but also kind of fabulous? ~ Holly Black

I've opposed black regimes and white regimes, leftist regimes and rightist regimes. I'm close to Aristide because I have respect for him, but all that is beside the point. ~ Randall Robinson

What fragmented individualism really meant was what happened to a black man who tried to make it in this society: in order to succeed, he had to become an imitation white man - dress white, talk white, think white, express the values of middle-class white culture (at least when he was in the presence of white men). Implied in all this was the hiding, the denial, of his selfhood, his negritude, his culture, as though they were somehow shameful. If he succeeded, he was an alienated marginal man - alienated from the strength of his culture and from fellow black men, and never able, of course, to become that imitation white man because he bore the pigment that made the white man view him as intrinsically other. ~ John Howard Griffin

American music culture is black culture. ~ Yelawolf

We Hoosiers hold to some quaint notions. Some might say we 'cling' to them, though not out of fear or ignorance. We believe in paying our bills. We have kept our state in the black throughout the recent unpleasantness, while cutting rather than raising taxes, by practicing an old tribal ritual - we spend less money than we take in. ~ Mitch Daniels

In an age when most black women belonged to the 'servant class' – sweeping the yard, making the beds, cooking etc. – Bessie, orphaned at five, asked the Irish lady who took her into her home in Boston when she lost both her parents if she'd buy her a motorcycle.
And with the simple advice, "Just don't get hurt" and even though "nice girls didn't go around riding motorcycles" her adoptive mother bought her a 1927 Indian. ~ Karl Wiggins

... your midthirties...is the age that women usually start to feel confident. Having finally left behind the...awfulness of your twenties...your thirties are the point where the good stuff kicks in...How odd, then, that as your face and body finally begin to display the signs (lines, softening, gray hairs) that you've entered the zone of kick-ass eminence and intolerance of dullards, there should be pressure for you to...totally remove them. Give the impression that, actually, you are still a bit gullible and incompetent, and totally open to being screwed over by someone a bit cleverer and older than you... Lines and grayness are nature's way of telling you not to fuck with someone--the equivalent of the yellow-and-black banding on a wasp...Lines are your weapons against the idiots. Lines are your 'KEEP AWAY FROM THE WISE INTOLERANT WOMAN' sign. ~ Caitlin Moran

A well-educated black has a tremendous advantage over a well-educated white in terms of the job market. I think sometimes a black may think they don't have an advantage or this and that ... I've said on one occasion, even about myself, if I were starting off today, I would love to be a well-educated black, because I believe they do have an actual advantage. ~ Donald Trump

I haven't had a very good day. I think I might still be hung over and everyone's dead and my root beer's gone. ~ Holly Black

My mother didn't have a heart, Kreacher," Sirius snapped. "She kept herself alive out of pure spite" -Sirius Black to Kreacher, the Order of the Phoenix ~ J.K. Rowling

Life without music can only be seen in black and white. It takes music to add the color. ~ Jessie Haas

Love is stupid. All we do is break one another's hearts. ~ Holly Black

Excuse me, but what kinda black lady are you?" I smiled, looked at her, and said, "The kinda black lady that you wanna know. ~ Rebecca Carroll

I respect myself and insist upon it from everybody. And because I do it, I then respect everybody, too. ~ Maya Angelou

I suppose it was a mistake to sketch in a background for the movie, in which I described a likely mix of people in a late-Roman settlement, amongst them people from Africa and the Near East. 'You mean they had black people back then!' was actually what my boss exclaimed when he read that. 'Could Lancelot's sidekick be black? ~ Michael Moorcock

Haven't you watched the feeds?" Winter asked her, more gently. "Vampires like anything and everything that keeps them from getting bored. Anything and everything." ~ Holly Black

You know you were with the lessers, true?"
Butch lifted one of his busted-up hands. "And here I thought I'd been to Elizabeth Arden. ~ J.R. Ward

That's just like America. It's made up of lots of different people. We're all different colors, different ages, we do different jobs
but it takes all of us black people, white people, brown people, men and women, young and old, working in the factories, working in the fields, working in offices, working in stores
it takes a lot of different kinds of people to get the job done for America. ~ Jesse Jackson

Black New Yorkers' distressing personal accounts of poverty and unemployment, inadequate housing, white supremacy and state-sanctioned violence politicized St. Clair, leading her to become one of New York's staunchest yet most unlikely voices against urban inequity. ~ LaShawn Harris

If you keep it," Daneca says, "he'll have his claws in you."
Everyone has their claws in me. Everyone. ~ Holly Black

The funeral is a quiet one, despite the number of mourners present. There are no sobs or flailing handkerchiefs. There is a smattering of color amongst the sea of traditional black. Even the light rain cannot push it down into the realms of despair. It rests instead in a space of thoughtful melancholy. ~ Erin Morgenstern

At seven p.m., hope is sparked again when some new chirpy airline employee announces that a new plane without that nasty mechanical problem - the aviation of the clap - will arrive around 9 o'clock. Apparently, the old plane would now be used as a decoy plane so that when a plane wasn't available it could be loaded with passengers who could sit there thinking that they would be leaving in fifteen minutes. ~ Lewis Black

I have been wearing black, which was a reaction to the Ginger thing. But now I have hopes and I can be anything. Tomorrow I might be naked with a feather boa, who knows? ~ Geri Halliwell

The election of Donald Trump confirmed everything I knew of my country and none of what I could accept. The idea that America would follow its first black president with Donald Trump accorded with its history. I was shocked at my own shock. I had wanted Obama to be right.

I still want Obama to be right. I still would like to fold myself into the dream. This will not be possible. ~ Ta-Nehisi Coates

We are here in a wood of little beeches:
And the leaves are like black lace
Against a sky of nacre.
One bough of clear promise
Across the moon.
It is in this wise that God speaketh unto me.
He layeth hands of healing upon my flesh,
Stilling it in an eternal peace,
Until my soul reaches out myriad and infinite hands
Toward him,
And is eased of its hunger.
And I know that this passes:
This implacable fury and torment of men,
As a thing insensate and vain:
And the stillness hath said unto me,
Over the tumult of sounds and shaken flame,
Out of the terrible beauty of wrath,
I alone am eternal.
One bough of clear promise
Across the moon ~ Frederic Manning

On the first day of November last year, sacred to many religious calendars but especially the Celtic, I went for a walk among bare oaks and birch. Nothing much was going on. Scarlet sumac had passed and the bees were dead. The pond had slicked overnight into that shiny and deceptive glaze of delusion, first ice. It made me remember sakes and conjure a vision of myself skimming backward on one foot, the other extended; the arms become wings. Minnesota girls know that this is not a difficult maneuver if one's limber and practices even a little after school before the boys claim the rink for hockey. I think I can still do it - one thinks many foolish things when November's bright sun skips over the entrancing first freeze.

A flock of sparrows reels through the air looking more like a flying net than seventy conscious birds, a black veil thrown on the wind. When one sparrow dodges, the whole net swerves, dips: one mind. Am I part of anything like that?

Maybe not. The last few years of my life have been characterized by stripping away, one by one, loves and communities that sustain the soul. A young colleague, new to my English department, recently asked me who I hang around with at school. "Nobody," I had to say, feeling briefly ashamed. This solitude is one of the surprises of middle age, especially if one's youth has been rich in love and friendship and children. If you do your job right, children leave home; few communities can stand an individual's most ~ Mary Rose O'Reilley

Lou hoisted up her gown and winced as she tottered across the parking lot. The sparkly four-inch heels had looked so pretty in the box, but they felt like a mortar and pestle grinding each bone in her foot. She missed her green Crocs.
Lou plucked at the tight elastic, squeezing her under the sleek black dress her fiancé, Devlin, had given her. He walked five steps ahead of her, so she scurried to catch up.
"Overstuffed truffle and foie gras sausage," Lou said.
Devlin's face crinkled in confusion. "What?"
"It's a new dish, inspired by how I feel in these clothes. Maybe served over brown butter dumplings..." Lou tilted her head, visualizing the newly formed meal. ~ Amy E. Reichert

Magnus Bane appeared in their kitchen, wrapped in a long black coat, his right hand sparking blue fire, his expression thunderous."Why in the names of the nine princes of Hell are neither of you answering your phone?" he demanded. ~ Cassandra Clare

I always thought that would be really neat if black people ever got control of the United States we would, of course, tear down some of the statues because we just don't like them...like all of Richmond would probably not have a statue standing. ~ Nikki Giovanni

Oh, that's the pot calling the kettle black.
Amusement flowed through the connection as Seth said, Or it's the pot calling the pot a pot. ~ Jennifer L. Armentrout

And because there was that night when you called me at three in the morning to come get you, and then you made me promise not to laugh or say anything when you came out of a club wearing only pink suede chaps and a black thong. That's why. ~ Rhys Ford

The median GPA and LSAT percentile for students of the country's elite law schools were 3.8 and 98 respectively. At the time fewer than 20 black law students in the entire country met those standards. ~ Lino Graglia

Telling Sam and Daneca feels like peeling off my own skin to expose everything underneath. It hurts. ~ Holly Black

I'm not a teddy bear that girls can clutch. I'm sharp and hard, the thing that braces a girl to the bed, the one who grips her strongly and whispers with a husky, edged voice. I'm as rough on the outside as I am black on the inside. ~ Krista Ritchie

As she felt his fangs against her neck, she was in another world.
There was screaming. A woman was somewhere in agony. Everything was black, and the tormented scream was overwhelming, echoing through the emptiness. After the screaming subsided, there was panting, loud and steady, and it wasn't as dark anymore. There was a room visible now, in a reddish light. A pale man with black hair hovered over a woman dressed in white. She lay on a bed, looking disheveled and sweaty. Her brown-black hair clung to her wet forehead and shoulders. She was covered in blood. The man sat next to her, and held her close to him. He stroked her hair as her chest heaved desperately.
"I love you, my dearest Katerina," he said, cradling her in his strong arms. "Soon, we'll be together forever." Everything faded to black once more, and the woman stopped breathing. All was silent and still. ~ Dawn Bonney

For here you were, Big James, named for me - you were a big baby, I was not - here you were, to be loved. To be loved, baby, hard, at once, and forever, to strengthen you against the loveless world. ~ James Baldwin