We felt that the police needed a label, a label other than that fear image that they carried in the community. So we used the pig as the rather low-lifed animal in order to identify the police. And it worked.

We [Panthers] have not said much about the homosexual at all, but we must relate to the homosexual movement because it is a real thing. And I know through reading, and through my life experience and observations that homosexuals are not given freedom and liberty by anyone in the society. They might be the most oppresed people in the society.

Youths are passed through schools that don’t teach, then forced to search for jobs that don’t exist and finally left stranded in the street to stare at the glamorous lives advertised around them.

I think the time is right for organizing and to give Blacks more political - the progressive Blacks, you have to make a distinction - participation, more Blacks in more authoritative positions, in more electoral political positions. But we want the right ones.

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

There's no reason for the establishment to fear me. But it has every right to fear the people collectively - I am one with the people.

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