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

We were trying to increase the conflict that was already happening... we felt that we would take the conflict to so high a level that some change had to come.

The reactionary suicide is ‘wise,’ and the revolutionary suicide is a ‘fool,’ a fool for the revolution in the way Paul meant when he spoke of being a ‘fool for Christ,’ That foolishness can move mountains of oppression; it is our great leap and our commitment to the dead and the unborn.

I always said this and the people think it's a cute answer, but I say we have always been in the system and that's why we fight because we don't like the system. We are trying to transform it.

During those long years in Oakland public schools, I did not have one teacher who taught me anything relevant to my own life or experience. Not one instructor ever awoke in me a desire to learn more or to question or to explore the worlds of literature, science, and history. All they did was try to rob me of the sense of my own uniqueness and worth, and in the process nearly killed my urge to inquire.

When I was in the penitentiary after being accused of killing a policeman, I was more in the system in the penitentiary than ever.

If you stop struggling, then you stop life.