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It is comforting to reflect that the disproportion of things in the world seems to be only arithmetical.
β Franz Kafka

Wisdom for Every Moment
It is comforting to reflect that the disproportion of things in the world seems to be only arithmetical.
A book should serve as the ax for the frozen sea within us.
Woman, or more precisely put, perhaps, marriage, is the representative of life with which you are meant to come to terms.
The relationship to one's fellow man is the relationship of prayer, the relationship to oneself is the relationship of striving; it is from prayer that one draws the strength for one's striving.
You can kill a revolutionary but you can never kill the revolution.
We're going to fight racism not with racism, but we're going to fight with solidarity. We say we're not going to fight capitalism with black capitalism, but we're going to fight it with socialism.
We do not support people who are anarchistic, opportunistic, adventuristic, and Custeristic.
We might not be back. I might be in jail. I might be anywhere. But when I leave, you'll remember I said, with the last words on my lips, that I am a revolutionary. And you're going to have to keep on saying that. You're going to have to say that I am a proletariat; I am the people.
We're not a racist organization, because we understand that racism is an excuse used for capitalism, and we know that racism is just - it's a byproduct of capitalism.
You can jail a revolutionary, but you can't jail the revolution.
I have a lot of respect for Martin Luther King. I think he was one of the greatest orators that the country ever produced.
A lot of people think the Breakfast for Children program is charity. But what does it do? It takes the people from a stage to another stage. Any program that's revolutionary is an advancing program. Revolution is change.
People have to be armed to have power, you see.
I am the people, I'm not the pig. You got to make a distinction. And the people are going to have to attack the pigs. The people are going to have to stand up against the pigs. That's what the Panthers is doing, that's what the Panthers are doing all over the world.
You have to understand that people have to pay a price for peace. If you dare to struggle, you dare to win.
We say that we will work with anybody and form a coalition with anybody that has revolution on their mind.
You can't build a revolution with no education. Jomo Kenyatta did this in Africa, and because the people were not educated, he became as much an oppressor as the people he overthrew.
Everything would be alright if everything was put back in the hands of the people, and we're going to have to put it back in the hands of the people.
We say primarily that the priority of this struggle is class. That Marx and Lenin and Che Guevara and Mao Tse-Tung, and anybody else who ever said or knew or practiced anything about revolution, always said that a revolution is a class struggle.
With no education, you have neocolonialism instead of colonialism, like you've got in Africa now and like you've got in Haiti. So what we're talking about is there has to be an educational program. That's very important.
The Black Panther Party stood up and said that we don't care what anybody says. We don't think fighting fire with fire is best; we think you fight fire with water best.
Yes, we do defend our office as we do defend our homes. This is a constitutional right everybody has, and nothing's funny about that. The only reason they get mad at the Black Panther Party when you do it is for the simple reason that we're political.
Let me just say: Peace to you, if you're willing to fight for it.
Black people need some peace. White people need some peace. And we are going to have to fight. We're going to have to struggle. We're going to have to struggle relentlessly to bring about some peace, because the people that we're asking for peace, they are a bunch of megalomaniac warmongers, and they don't even understand what peace means.
I believe I'm going to die doing the things I was born to do. I believe I'm going to die high off the people. I believe I'm going to die a revolutionary in the international revolutionary proletarian struggle.
I'm not afraid to say I'm at war with the pigs.
If you ever think about me, and you ain't gonna do no revolutionary act, forget about me. I don't want myself on your mind if you're not going to work for the people.
We ain't gonna fight no reactionary pigs who run up and down the street being reactionary; we're gonna organize and dedicate ourselves to revolutionary political power and teach ourselves the specific needs of resisting the power structure, arm ourselves, and we're gonna fight reactionary pigs with international proletarian revolution.
A lot of people don't understand the Black Panthers Party's relationship with white mother country radicals.
I went down to the prison in Menard, thinking we were the vanguard, but down there, I got down on my knees and listened and learned from the people.
To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.
Without music, life would be a mistake.
It is impossible to suffer without making someone pay for it; every complaint already contains revenge.
All things are subject to interpretation whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.
We often refuse to accept an idea merely because the tone of voice in which it has been expressed is unsympathetic to us.
The essence of all beautiful art, all great art, is gratitude.
All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking.
We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once. And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh.
When you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.
Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs; he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter.
You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.
This is what is hardest: to close the open hand because one loves.
Many are stubborn in pursuit of the path they have chosen, few in pursuit of the goal.
There cannot be a God because if there were one, I could not believe that I was not He.
On the mountains of truth you can never climb in vain: either you will reach a point higher up today, or you will be training your powers so that you will be able to climb higher tomorrow.
Whatever is done for love always occurs beyond good and evil.
Blessed are the forgetful: for they get the better even of their blunders.
It is always consoling to think of suicide: in that way one gets through many a bad night.
Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.
Once spirit was God, then it became man, and now it is even becoming mob.