Fredrick Allen Hampton was an American activist, Marxist-Leninist, and revolutionary socialist. He came to prominence in Chicago as chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party (BPP), and deputy chairman of the national BPP. In this capacity, he founded the Rainbow Coalition, a prominent multicultural political organization that initially included the Black Panthers, Young Patriots, and the Young Lords, and an alliance among major Chicago street gangs to help them end infighting and work for social change. These Fred Hampton quotes will motivate you.
Best Fred Hampton Quotes
- “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
- “We got to face some facts. That the masses are poor, that the masses belong to what you call the lower class, and when I talk about the masses, I’m talking about the white masses, I’m talking about the black masses, and the brown masses, and the yellow masses, too. 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. We say you don’t fight capitalism with no black capitalism; you fight capitalism with socialism.” ~ Fred Hampton
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“You can kill a revolutionary, but you cannot kill a revolution.” ~ Fred Hampton
- “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
- “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 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. The people have to have the power: it belongs to the people.” ~ Fred Hampton
- “You don’t fight fire with fire. You fight fire with water. We’re gonna fight racism with solidarity. We’re not gonna fight capitalism with Black capitalism. We’re gonna fight capitalism with socialism. Socialism is the people. If you’re afraid of socialism, you’re afraid of yourself.” ~ Fred Hampton
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“You can kill a revolutionary but you can’t kill revolution…you can jail a liberator but you can’t jail liberation.” ~ Fred Hampton
- “We understood that politics is nothing but war without bloodshed and war is nothing but politics with bloodshed.” ~ Fred Hampton
- “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.” ~ Fred Hampton
- “Let me just say: Peace to you, if you’re willing to fight for it.” ~ Fred Hampton
- “The people have to have the power: it belongs to the people.” ~ Fred Hampton
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“If you dare to struggle, you dare to win.” ~ Fred Hampton
- “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.” ~ Fred Hampton
- “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
- “You’re gonna have to keep on saying that – I am the proletariat, I am the people. I am not the pig. You’ve got to make a distinction.” ~ Fred Hampton
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“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
- “A lot of people don’t understand the Black Panthers Party’s relationship with white mother country radicals.” ~ Fred Hampton
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“In plain proletarian worker’s language, it takes two to tango.” ~ Fred Hampton
- “You have to understand that people have to pay a price for peace. If you dare to struggle, you dare to win.”~ Fred Hampton
- “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.”~ 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.”~ Fred Hampton
- “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.”~ Fred Hampton
- “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.”~ Fred Hampton
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“I’m not afraid to say I’m at war with the pigs.”~ Fred Hampton
- “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.”~ Fred Hampton
- “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.”~ Fred Hampton
- “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.”~ Fred Hampton
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“People have to be armed to have power, you see.”~ Fred Hampton
- “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.”~ Fred Hampton
- “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.”~ Fred Hampton
- “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.”~ Fred Hampton
