Seale Quotes & Sayings

It is our lot to take what we have, make of it what we will. We are meant to finger the leftovers, rock our old dolls, clutch wooden angels to our breasts. — Jan Seale

You may have a beautiful philosophy, you may have lofty ideals, but what you will do with your philosophy and ideals is dependent entirely upon what you are inside yourself — Ervin Seale

All I did in Chicago was to exercise my legal right to speak on my own behalf and I was given four years in jail as a result. But I think the most serious injustice perpetrated by the court system in America is the inability of a black man to get a jury of his peers. — Bobby Seale

The only solution to pollution is a people's humane revolution! — Bobby Seale

Revolution is about the need to re-evolve political, economic and social justice and power back into the hands of the people, preferably through legislation and policies that make human sense. That's what revolution is about. Revolution is not about shootouts. — Bobby Seale

There is one recurring, persistent, perennial, and dogging personal problem which, more than any other, steals the force and peace of people and ruins projects and enterprises and careers. It is the habit of feeling hurt, because of what others do, or do not do and what they say or do not say — Ervin Seale

I like Barack Obama. — Bobby Seale

It is what you think of this situation that governs you and not the situation itself. Causation is always in mind and not in things. — Ervin Seale

Our position was: If you don't attack us, there won't be any violence; if you bring violence to us, we will defend ourselves. — Bobby Seale

So she becomes, like all females deprived of a mate, predatory and exacting. — Sara Seale

Many centuries ago, Oriental thinkers recognized that the mind is a constant mover and that it is next to impossible to stop it altogether. But one can learn to manage it by skillful use of the handle of control. They compared the mind to a jumping monkey. To intensify the image, they added that the monkey was maddened; then someone got him drunk; and finally, a scorpion bit him. — Ervin Seale

We've got to face the fact that some people say you fight fire best with fire, but we say you put fire out best with water. We say you don't fight racism with racism. We're gonna fight racism with solidarity. — Fred Hampton

The first point was we wanted power to determine our own destiny in our own black community. And what we had done is, we wanted to write a program that was straightforward to the people. We didn't want to give a long dissertation. — Bobby Seale

They came down on us because we had a grass-roots, real people's revolution, complete with the programs, complete with the unity, complete with the working coalitions, where we crossed racial lines. — Bobby Seale

There's nothing wrong with being a cop. There's nothing wrong with being a white person. It's about where your heart is ... We've got to get everyone beyond the xenophobic isolationism. — Bobby Seale

A people who have suffered so much for so long at hands of a racist society must draw the line somewhere ... the black communities of America must rise up as one man to halt the progression of a trend that leads inevitably to their total destruction. — Bobby Seale

When we use the term pig, for example, we are referring to the people who systematically violate the peoples' constitutional rights- whether they be monopoly capitalists or police. The term is now being adopted by radicals, hippies, and minority peoples. Even the workers, when the pigs supported strike-breakers like they did as Union Oil where 100 local police came in a cracked strikers' heads, began to call them by their true name. — Bobby Seale

The Black Panther party of Self-Defense is a revolutionary party. — Bobby Seale

People called me a hoodlum and a thug. But they didn't tell you I was a carpenter, an architect, a stand-up comic - even a bartender. And a barbecue cook. But they didn't tell you that. — Bobby Seale

Being so closely related to the South, barbecue was part of segregation and helped defeat it. — Bobby Seale

I'm a progressive. The progression has to be manifested in a new direction in policies and legislation. — Bobby Seale

The FBI's Counter-Intelligence Program would work hand-in-hand with police departments, literally planning attacks on Black Panther Party offices throughout the United States of America. They did this over a period of time. — Bobby Seale

It is not what is happening to you but rather what is happening in you that determines whether you succeed or fail. — Ervin Seale

You can't call yourself a university and exclude whole ethnic groups. — Bobby Seale

The Black Panther Party were not revenge nationalists. — Bobby Seale

The first African-American leader was Dr. Martin Luther King. — Bobby Seale

But I think people, especially white people, have to come to understand that the language of the ghetto is a language of its own, and as the party- whose members for the most part come from the ghetto- seeks to talk to the people, it must speak the people's language. — Bobby Seale

I think the American Dream should be about a greater progressive legislation that allows for what I call a necessary future world of cooperational humanism. — Bobby Seale

We don't hate nobody because of their color. We hate oppression! — Bobby Seale

I still want my right to defend myself. A railroad operation, and you know it, from Nixon on down. they got you running around violating my constitutional rights. — Bobby Seale

You see Martin Luther King is dead and Huey Newton is not. And Malcolm X is dead and Bobby Seale is not. And Vernon Jordan was shot. The thing that revolutionaries, or even people who want to claim they're revolutionaries, often forget is that it doesn't make no difference what kind of wardrobe you wear, and if you speak up about Black people doing better you just risked your life. — Gil Scott-Heron

We're hip to the fact that Superman never saved no black people. You got that? — Bobby Seale

On the one hand, the guns were there to help capture the imagination of the people. But more important, since we knew that you couldn't observe the police without guns, we took our guns with us to let the police know that we have an equalizer. — Bobby Seale

The people have now come to realize that the only way to deal with the oppressor is to deal on our own terms and this was done. — Bobby Seale

I have quite a few good friends in Philadelphia who were police officers. — Bobby Seale

I think I can capture the taste buds of the average right-wing conservative who loves barbecue. — Bobby Seale

Keep any description of trouble or sickness or error minimal, for there is something inside which is listening, and it says, 'Oh! You like this! I will make you a lot more of it.' — Ervin Seale

The unorganized mind will always be restless until its content is reordered. — Ervin Seale

Lots of people think I went to prison. I never went to prison. I was in jail without bail. — Bobby Seale

The Black Panther Party was not a gang. They grew out of a young black intelligentsia on college campuses. — Bobby Seale

You don't fight racism with racism, the best way to fight racism is with solidarity. — Bobby Seale

We were not talking about the average white person: we was talking about the corporate money rich and the racist jive politicians and the lackeys, as we used to call them, for the government who perpetuate all this exploitation and racism. — Bobby Seale

Money is the medium of exchange, and it's how you make things happen. To say you hate it is some farfetched, idealistic crap. — Bobby Seale

To develop political and economic power in a capitalist society, you need capital. — Bobby Seale

Fox News never calls up Bobby Seale to articulate a stance in opposition to right-wing conservatives. To me, giving the New Black Panthers a platform on Fox is a subtle tactic to scare people. — Bobby Seale

I am not a hoodlum. I'm a community organizer. — Bobby Seale

I'm still a political revolutionary. The fire never went out of me, but perceptions and realizations change. — Bobby Seale

When donors visited the Black Panther Party, they came and saw our real programs, a real clinic, with real doctors and medics, giving service to people. — Bobby Seale

We were like heroes, to stand there and observe the police, and the police were scared to move upon us. — Bobby Seale

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

Huey was something else. Huey was out of sight. He knew how to do it. Huey was ten motherfuckers. — Bobby Seale

I'd have no trouble being the barbecue kingpin of America. I'd just add it to all the other things I am: jazz musician, carpenter, architect, engineer and revolutionary. — Bobby Seale

I'm going to have to call up Spike Lee. I did a cameo for him in 'Malcolm X,' and I'm trying to get him to do my life story and the history of the Black Panther Party. — Bobby Seale

Electoral politics was always an objective of the Black Panther party, so Barack Obama is a part of what we dreamed and struggled and died for. — Bobby Seale

There is an entire generation of young people who know nothing about how viciously the FBI attacked The Black Panther Party, and why. — Bobby Seale

My father was a master carpenter and builder. Architectural design, engineering design, mechanical design, three-dimensional views, that was my shtick, my forte. — Bobby Seale

If they had not murdered Malcolm X, there probably never would have been a Black Panther Party. — Bobby Seale

Perpetual emotion is the past time of the undisciplined mind. — Ervin Seale