“Relativism and the Use of Language,” pp. 123-124.
Language is Sermonic (1970)
Context: If we share to a large extent in the mutuality of spirit which makes meaning possible, we are receptive to true meanings; if we do not, we may accept wrong or perverted ones. And since there is no way of getting outside the human imagination to decide otherwise what a word should mean, we are compelled to realize that the most imaginative users of language are those who are going to have the greatest influence upon vocabulary in the long run.
Source: 1970s-1980s, The Limits Of Organization (1974), Chapter 2, Organization And Information, p. 34
Beyond Freedom and Dignity (1972).
“Fascismo and the Rights of Victory” speech delivered at Florence (9 October 1919) p. 106
1920s, Mussolini as Revealed in his Political Speeches (November 1914—August 1923) (1923)
Source: The Christian Agnostic (1965), p.77-78, (Paul Tillich: The Shaking of the Foundations. 1963. Pelican Books. p. 164
“We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.”
Nobel Prize Lecture (1993)
Context: Word-work is sublime... because it is generative; it makes meaning that secures our difference, our human difference — the way in which we are like no other life.
We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.
"Negroes Are Anti-Semitic Because They're Anti-White" http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/03/29/specials/baldwin-antisem.html in The New York Times (9 April 1967)
Context: It is true that two wrongs don't make a right, as we love to point out to the people we have wronged. But one wrong doesn't make a right, either. People who have been wronged will attempt to right the wrong; they would not be people if they didn't. They can rarely afford to be scrupulous about the means they will use. They will use such means as come to hand. Neither, in the main, will they distinguish one oppressor from another, nor see through to the root principle of their oppression.
Source: Politics Among Nations (1948), p. 33 (1993 edition)
Change the World Without Taking Power (2002)
