40 Fred Hampton Quotes About Racism, Socialism, and Revolution

Best Fred Hampton quotes

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Here are some of the best Fred Hampton quotes to get you started with.

• "If you dare to struggle, you dare to win. If you dare not struggle, then damn it, you don't deserve to win." ~ Fred Hampton

• "You can kill a revolutionary, but you cannot kill a revolution." ~ Fred Hampton

• “You can jail a liberator but you can't jail liberation." ~ Fred Hampton

• "I don't know if I like communism, and I don't know if I like socialism. But I know that the Breakfast for Children Program feeds my kids. And if you put your hands on that Breakfast for Children Program . . ." ~ Fred Hampton

• "We understood that politics is nothing but war without bloodshed and war is nothing but politics with bloodshed." ~ Fred Hampton

• "Let me just say: Peace to you, if you're willing to fight for it." ~ Fred Hampton

• "I'm not going to die slipping on no ice." ~ Fred Hampton

• "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." ~ Fred Hampton

Quotes from Fred Hampton

• "A lot of people don't understand the Black Panthers Party's relationship with white mother country radicals." ~ Fred Hampton

• "In plain proletarian worker's language, it takes two to tango." ~ Fred Hampton

• “I have a lot of respect for Martin Luther King. I think he was one of the greatest orators that the country ever produced.”

• “You don’t miss the water ‘til the well runs dry.”

• “We have to start learning, and you learn through practice. We have to start making mistakes, and you learn through making mistakes.”

• “That we might be in school now, might think we’re on the mountain top, but we’re gonna come down to the valley, because people in the valley, commitment’s in the valley, oppression’s in the valley, aggression, repression, fascism, all exists in the valley. No matter how nice it might be on the mountain top, we’ve got a commitment, so we’re going back. We got to go back to the valley.”

• "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." ~ Fred Hampton

• “We do not support people who are anarchistic, opportunistic, adventuristic, and Custeristic.”

Fred Hampton quotes people

Fred Hampton Quotes - Photo by HistoryOfTheDE from Flickr

Get inside the mind of the American activist and revolutionary socialist with our collection of Fred Hampton quotes below.

• “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.”

• “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.”

• “Why don’t you live for the people? Why don’t you struggle for the people? Why don’t you die for the people?”

• “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.”

• “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.”

• “You have to understand that people have to pay a price for peace. If you dare to struggle, you dare to win.”

• "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. That's what it has to be. " ~ Fred Hampton

• "The people have to have the power: it belongs to the people." ~ Fred Hampton

• “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.”

• “People have to be armed to have power, you see.”

• “I was born in a bourgeois community and had some of the better things in life, but I found that there were more people starving than there were people eating, more people that didn’t have clothes than did have clothes, and I just happened to be one of the few. So I decided that I wouldn’t stop doing what I’m doing until all those people are free.”

• “That we might be in school now, might think we’re on the mountain top, but we’re gonna come down to the valley, because people in the valley, commitment’s in the valley, oppression’s in the valley, aggression, repression, fascism, all exists in the valley. No matter how nice it might be on the mountain top, we’ve got a commitment, so we’re going back. We got to go back to the valley.”

• “Socialism is the people! You afraid of yourself. If you afraid of socialism, you afraid of yourself.”

• “I’m telling you that we’re living in an infectious society right now. I’m telling you that we’re living in a sick society. And anybody that endorses integrating into this sick society before it’s cleaned up is a man who’s committing a crime against the people.”

• “We know that black people are most oppressed. And if we didn’t know that, then why the hell would we be running around talking about the black liberation struggle has to be the vanguard for all liberation struggles? 

• “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.”

Quotes from The Murder of Fred Hampton

Fred Hampton Quotes - Photo by HistoryOfTheDE from Flickr

The following Fred Hampton quotes are taken from ‘The Assassination of Fred Hampton: How the FBI and the Chicago Police Murdered a Black Panther’, attorney Jeff Haas’s personal account of how he and People’s Law Office partner Flint Taylor pursued Hampton’s assassins, ultimately prevailing over unlimited government resources and FBI conspiracy.

Not only is a story of justice well delivered, but the book also puts Hampton in a new light as a dynamic community leader and an inspiration in the fight against injustice.

• “Silence and inaction equals death.”

• “If you are not ready to make a commitment at the age of twenty only because you are afraid to die then you are dead already.”

• “I finally saw that Fred Hampton was fearless. Literally, without fear. And as we listened to the speeches again and again, it became apparent he had accommodated death. He knew he was going to die. It was OK And so he had set aside the ultimate fear, the one that stopped all of us in our tracks, no matter how courageous, the net fear upon which we base all our other fears, the one that keeps us all in line. Hampton had simply set that fear to rest. He was free. Thus he was able to speak clean simple truths that hit you like a thunderbolt.”