Institutions work this way. A son is murdered by the police, and nothing is done. The institutions send the victim's family on a merry-go-round, going from one agency to another, until they wear out and give up. this is a very effective way to beat down poor and oppressed people, who do not have the time to prosecute their cases. Time is money to poor people. To go to Sacramento means loss of a day's pay - often a loss of job. If this is a democracy, obviously it is a bourgeois democracy limited to the middle and upper classes. Only they can afford to participate in it.

The walls, the bars, the guns and the guards can never encircle or hold down the idea of the people.

Power is the ability to define phenomena, and make it act in a desired manner.

Revolutionary suicide does not mean that I and my comrades have a death wish; it means just the opposite.

I don't want people to think he [Eldridge Cleaver] is so important - our party is important because our party works for the people and no individual is important in our party, including myself.

I do not think that life will change for the better without an assault on the Establishment, which goes on exploiting the wretched of the earth.

But before we die, how shall we live? I say with hope and dignity; and if premature death is the result, that death has a meaning reactionary suicide can never have. It is the price of self-respect.