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

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.

I expected to die. At no time before the trial did I expect to escape with my life. Yet being executed in the gas chamber did not necessarily mean defeat. It could be one more step to bring the community to a higher level of consciousness.

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

To die for the racists is lighter than a feather, but to die for the people is heavier than any mountain and deeper than any sea.

Any unarmed people are slaves, or are subject to slavery at any given moment. If the guns are taken out of the hands of the people and only the pigs have guns, then it's off to the concentration camps, the gas chambers, or whatever the fascists in America come up with. One of the democratic rights of the United States, the Second Amendment to the Constitution, gives the people the right to bear arms. However, there is a greater right; the right of human dignity that gives all men the right to defend themselves.

The nature of a panther is that he never attacks. But if anyone attacks or backs into a corner, the panther comes up to wipe that aggressor or that attacker out.