Quotes about blackness
page 14

“One fine day, or perhaps one night,
Near a lake, when I'm sleeping,
Suddenly, the skies cave in,
And out of nowhere,
Surges an eagle, black.”

Barbara (singer) (1930–1997) French singer

Un beau jour, ou peut-etre une nuit,
Près d'un lac, je m'étais endormie,
Quand soudain, semblant crever le ciel,
Et venant de nulle part,
Surgit un aigle noir.
L'Aigle noir.
Song lyrics

Sleep, Night

“Some time ago I saw a painting by Thijs Maris [= Matthijs Maris, one of the three brothers Maris, all three famous Dutch impressionist painters of the Hague School ] that reminded me of it. An old Dutch town with rows of brownish red houses with step-gables and tall flights of steps, grey roofs, and white or yellow doors, window-frames and cornices; canals with ships and a large white drawbridge, a barge with a man at the tiller going under it... Some distance away a stone bridge over the canal, with people and a cart with white horses crossing it. And everywhere movement, a porter with his wheelbarrow, a man leaning against the railing, gazing into the water, women in black with white caps... A greyish white sky over everything…”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

quote from Vincent's Letter #031 to Theo van Gogh (London, 6 April 1875) http://vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let031/letter.html 1870s

Women, People, School, Water

“People sometimes think I take a white canvas and paint a black sign on it, but this is not true. I paint the white as well as the black and the white is just as important.”

Franz Kline (1910–1962) American painter

1950's, Conversations With Artists, 1957

People, Thinking, Painting

“Josef Albers's [a former art teacher of Rauschenberg, on Black Mountain College ] rule is to make order. As for me, I consider myself successful when I do something that resembles the lack of order I sense. (around 1949 during Black Mountain College, fh).”

Robert Rauschenberg (1925–2008) American artist

In Robert Rauschenberg, Works, Writings and Interviews, Sam Hunter; as quoted in Ediciones Poligrafa, Barcelona, Spain, 2006, p. 37
1950's

Art, Mountain, Sense, Teachers

“The terms "black box" and "white box" are convenient and figurative expressions of not very well determined usage. I shall understand by a black box a piece of apparatus, such as four-terminal networks with two input and two output terminals, which performs a definite operation on the present and past of the input potential, but for which we do not necessarily have any information of the structure by which this operation is performed. On the other hand, a white box will be similar network in which we have built in the relation between input and output potentials in accordance with a definite structural plan for securing a previously determined input-output relation.”

Norbert Wiener book Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine

Preface. page xi. (Footnote 1)
Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (1948)

Understanding, Past, Box

“Someday I must be able to paint truly remarkable colors. Yesterday I held in my lap a wide, silver-gray satin ribbon which I edged with two narrower black, patterned silk ribbons. And I placed on top of these a plump, bottle-green velvet bow. I'd like to be able to paint something one day in those colors.”

Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876–1907) German artist

‎note in her Journal, 3 June, 1902; as quoted in Paula Modersohn-Becker, the Letters and Journals, ed. Günter Busch and ‎Liselotte von Reinken (1998), p. 278
1900 - 1905
Variant: Someday I must be able to paint truly remarkable colors. Yesterday I held in my lap a wide, silver-gray satin ribbon which I edged with two narrower black, patterned silk ribbons. And I placed on top of these a plump, bottle-green velvet bow. I'd like to be able to paint something one day in those colors.

Color, Painting

“You may rejoice to think yourselves secure,
You may be grateful for the gift divine,
That grace unsought which made your black hearts pure
And fits your earthborn souls in Heaven to shine.
But is it sweet to look around and view
Thousands excluded from that happiness,
Which they deserve at least as much as you,
Their faults not greater nor their virtues less?”

Anne Brontë book Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell

Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell (1846), A Word to the Calvinists (1843)

Happiness, Soul, Thinking, Heart

“We do not mechanically connect the sensation of white with the idea of light, any more than we connect the sensation of black with the idea of darkness. We admit that a black jewel, even if of a dead black, may be more luminous than the white or pink satin of its case. Loving light, we refuse to measure it, and we avoid the geometrical ideas of the focus and the ray, which imply the repetition-contrary to the principle of variety which guides us-of bright planes and sombre intervals in a given direction. Loving colour, we refuse to limit it, and subdued or dazzling, fresh or muddy, we accept all the possibilities contained between the two extreme points of the spectrum, between the cold and the warm tone.”

Jean Metzinger (1883–1956) French painter

Du Cubisme (1912)

Love, Idea, Light, Dead

““On the 1st Rajab 990 [AD 1582] he (Husain Qulî Khãn) encamped by a field of maize near NagarkoT. The fortress (hissãr) of Bhîm, which is an idol temple of Mahãmãî, and in which none but her servants dwelt, was taken by the valour of the assailants at the first assault. A party of Rajpûts, who had resolved to die, fought most desperately till they were all cut down. A number of Brãhmans who for many years had served the temple, never gave one thought to flight, and were killed. Nearly 200 black cows belonging to Hindûs had, during the struggle, crowded together for shelter in the temple. Some savage Turks, while the arrows and bullets were falling like rain, killed those cows. They then took off their boots and filled them with the blood and cast it upon the roof and walls of the temple.”173”

Nizamuddin Ahmad (1551–1594) historian

Jalãlu’d-Dîn Muhammad Akbar Pãdshãh Ghãzî (AD 1556-1605) Nagarkot Kangra (Himachal Pradesh)
Tabqãt-i-Akharî

“This capacity for imitation is possessed by savages, at least by the more intelligent ones, and it has deceived us time after time. The British are as gullible as we are. Hundreds and hundreds of times, at least, they gave scholarships to Blacks from Basutoland or Kenya or Nigeria or one of their other possessions, and the result was almost always the same. With the money given him, the savage bought himself a good wardrobe, attended an English school, learned to play soccer, attended Oxford, wrote a charming essay on Wordsworth or on ancient law, copulated with half-witted English women who thought him "romantic" and themselves "broad-minded," and when he got tired of living on English generosity, went home to his tribe where he had a well-roasted baby served up to him as a delicacy of which he had been long deprived by the stupid prejudices of the stupid British.”

Revilo P. Oliver (1908–1994) American philologist

"What We Owe Our Parasites", speech (June 1968); Free Speech magazine (October and November 1995)
1960s

Women, Money, Stupidity, School

“To ask whether what the American people in the Declaration of Independence had affirmed as truth was in fact truth, was now said to be meaningless. But if History or Progress or 'change' is to be our guide, if the truth of relativism is to replace the truth of the Declaration, then the cause for which the nation fought at its birth, and in the Civil War, was meaningless, too. White power, black power, the Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, are as justifiable as Jefferson, Lincoln, or the doctrine of the equal natural rights of all human beings. We may understand how the Rev. Jeremiah Wright could so awfully misunderstand the American political tradition, inasmuch as it has been so very misunderstood for so long in circles from whom a better understanding could be expected. But this misunderstanding is a cancer which can in the end prove fatal, not only to a political campaign but to our country.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

2000s, God Bless America (2008), Slavery and the American Cause

War, People, Truth, History

“Absolutely, what we need to do is that companies must just surrender 51%. … They have exploited the wealth of that country [South Africa] for far too long. It is time that the people are now beginning to benefit. Our people don't have money to buy those shares, and they will never have money to buy those shares. … Under president Mbeki they had 2/3 majority, they could have done anything they wanted. Till today they have not done anything. … because the ANC did not want to tamper with the economic structure and … property ownership … We are going to engage in a very persuasive, peaceful engagement with capital. … We are meeting captains of the industry. Some of them are beginning to respond to our memorandum. Some are saying, well these are doable proposals. … We'll not use that [civil disobedience] until that our people are pushed to the limit. … These people are prepared to give shares to the black elite who are politically connected. … why not give it to the workers themselves who are … making this company … what it is.”

Julius Malema (1981) South African political activist

In a television interview with Zeinab Badawi of BBC HARDtalk in December 2015, Watch: Julius Malema grilled by BBC journalist http://businesstech.co.za/news/government/106007/watch-julius-malema-grilled-by-bbc-journalist/, Staff writer, BusinessTech (2 December 2015)

Money, People, Peace, Time

“Most of our political leaders are not engineers or scientists and do not listen to engineers or scientists. Today a letter from Einstein would get lost in the White House mail room, and the Manhattan Project would not even get started; it certainly could never be completed in three years. I am not aware of a single political leader in the U. S., either Democrat or Republican, who would cut health-care spending in order to free up money for biotechnology research — or, more generally, who would make serious cuts to the welfare state in order to free up serious money for major engineering projects. … Men reached the moon in July 1969, and Woodstock began three weeks later. With the benefit of hindsight, we can see that this was when the hippies took over the country, and when the true cultural war over Progress was lost. Today's aged hippies no longer understand that there is a difference between the election of a black president and the creation of cheap solar energy; in their minds, the movement towards greater civil rights parallels general progress everywhere. Because of these ideological conflations and commitments, the 1960s Progressive Left cannot ask whether things actually might be getting worse.”

Peter Thiel (1967) American entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and hedge fund manager

In an editorial http://www.nationalreview.com/article/278758/end-future-peter-thiel published by National Review (2011)

Men, Money, War, Health

“Long gone is the time when we opposed the notion that we all looked alike and talked alike. Somehow we have come to exalt the new black stereotype above all and to demand conformity to that norm. It is this notion — that our race defines us -- that Ralph Ellison so eloquently rebuts in his essay, "The World and the Jug." He sees the lives of black people as more than a burden, but also a discipline, just as any human life which has endured so long is a discipline, teaching its own insights into the human condition, its own strategies of survival. There's a fullness and even a richness here. And here despite the realities of politics, perhaps, but nevertheless here and real because it is human life.”

Clarence Thomas (1948) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

1990s, I Am a Man, a Black Man, an American (1998)

Life, People, World, Reality

“I am reminded of the words of Chairman Mao: It's always darkest before it goes completely black.”

John McCain (1936–2018) politician from the United States

As quoted in "McCain Wraps It Up" https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mccain-wraps-it-up/ (5 March 2008), by Andante Higgins, CBS News 2000s

“I have learned what suffering means. In a way that was impossible, I think I can understand something of the pain black people have come to endure. I know I contributed to that pain, and I can only ask your forgiveness.”

George Wallace (1919–1998) 45th Governor of Alabama

Address to the Montgomery Dexter Avenue Baptist Church (1979), as quoted in "George Wallace – From the Heart" (17 March 1995), The Washington Post.
1970s

Pain, People, Way, Forgiveness

“The world is beautiful outside: white, green, and red; but inside it is black and dark as death.”

Walther von der Vogelweide (1170–1230) Middle High German lyric poet

Diu welt ist ûzen schoene wîz grüen unde rôt
und innân swarzer varwe vinster sam der tôt.
"Owe war sint verswunden alliu mîniu jâr", line 37; translation from George Fenwick Jones Walther von der Vogelweide (New York: Twayne, 1968) p. 136.

Death, World, Beauty

“To Sylvan truth was truth and all else was black heresy, though on occasion he had the very human difficulty of deciding which was which.”

Sheri S. Tepper book Grass

Source: Grass (1989), Chapter 2 (p. 7)

Truth

“The sky spread over with one continuous cloud, whitened by the light of the moon, which, though her dim shape was seen, did not throw forth so strong a light as to chequer the earth with shadows. At once the clouds seemed to cleave asunder, and left her in the centre of a black-blue vault. She sailed along, followed by multitudes of stars, small, and bright, and sharp.”

Dorothy Wordsworth (1771–1855) English author, poet and diarist

January 25, 1798 Compare Wordsworth's "A Night-Piece", lines 1-16 http://www.bartleby.com/145/ww123.html. Diaries

Star, Light, Strong

“[Government] control gives rise to fraud, suppression of truth, intensification of the black market and artificial scarcity. Above all, it unmans the people and deprives them of initiative, it undoes the teaching of self-help…It makes them spoon-fed.”

Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) pre-eminent leader of Indian nationalism during British-ruled India

Delhi Diary (3 November 1947 entry), Navajivan Publishing House, Ahmedabad, (March 1948) pp. 68-70
1940s

People, Truth, Fraud, Help

“Nothing in nature or the cosmos is ever completely still — as I write this, several wild Mallards have returned to the Museum courtyard and are creating a frantic spectacle of water and wings as they dive and attack in their annual spring ritual. Further from home, a supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy 56 million light years from Earth has recently been observed to be spinning at close to the speed of light.”

Evalyn Gates (1958)

"Letter from the director", Explore magazine of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History (Spring 2013), p. 4

Home, Spring, Nature, Light

“If you're hell-bent on making your bank look and sound like a simpleton, a desk labelled Travel Money is still a bit too formal. Why not call it Oooh! Look at the Funny Foreign Banknotes instead? And accompany it with a doodle of a French onion-seller riding a bike, with a little black beret on his head and a baguette up his arse and a speech bubble saying, "Zut Alors! Here is where you gettez les Francs!"”

Charlie Brooker (1971) journalist, broadcaster and writer from England

The Guardian, 6 November 2006, The banks are coming over all chummy. It's nauseating http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1940584,00.html On Barclays' rebranding in an attempt to make themselves appear less stuffy Guardian columns

Money, Travel, Hell

“When Muhammad bin Qasim invaded Sind, he took captives wherever he went and sent many prisoners, especially women prisoners, to his homeland. Parimal Devi and Suraj Devi, the two daughters of Raja Dahir, who were sent to Hajjaj to adorn the harem of the Caliph, were part of a large bunch of maidens remitted as one-fifth share of the state (Khums) from the booty of war (Ghanaim). The Chachnama gives the details. After the capture of the fort of Rawar, Muhammad bin Qasim “halted there for three day, during which time he masscered 6,000 …men. Their followers and dependents, as well as their women and children were taken prisoner.” When the (total) number of prisoners was calculated, it was found to amount to thirty thousand persons (Kalichbeg has sixty thousand), amongst whom thirty were the daughters of the chiefs. They were sent to Hajjaj. The head of Dahir and the fifth part of prisoners were forwarded in charge of the Black Slave Kaab, son of Mubarak Rasti.96 In Sind itself female slaves captured after every campaign of the marching army, were married to Arab soldiers who settled down in colonies established in places like Mansura, Kuzdar, Mahfuza and Multan. The standing instructions of Hajjaj to Muhammad bin Qasim were to “give no quarter to infidels, but to cut their throats”, and take the women and children as captives. In the final stages of the conquest of Sind, “when the plunder and the prisoners of war were brought before Qasim… one-fifth of all the prisoners were chosen and set aside; they were counted as amounting to twenty thousand in number… (they belonged to high families) and veils were put on their faces, and the rest were given to the soldiers”.97 Obviously, a few lakhs of women were enslaved and distributed among the elite and the soldiers.”

Muhammad bin Qasim (695–715) Umayyad general

Chachnama, in Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 7

Women, Men, War, Children

“I’m Cuban, so we grew up eating meat. But I didn’t like it. I’d say, ‘Rice and black beans is just fine with me.’ But my mother, you know, would say, ‘Tu estas muy flaca!’ Then one day I saw my dad kill a chicken and ever since then I was grossed out by chicken.”

Vida Guerra (1974) American model

"Nude Vida Guerra Ad Pulls the Caliente Card to Raise Money for PETA", Fox News (25 March 2011) http://www.foxnews.com/lifestyle/2011/03/24/vide-guerra-gets-spicy-raise-money-peta.html

“Black theology cannot accept a view of God which does not represent God as being for oppressed blacks and thus against white oppressors. Living in a world of white oppressors, blacks have no time for a neutral God. The brutalities are too great and the pain too severe, and this means we must know where God is and what God is doing in the revolution. There is no use for a God who loves white oppressors the same as oppressed blacks. We have had too much of white love, the love that tells blacks to turn the other cheek and go the second mile. What we need is the divine love as expressed in black power, which is the power of blacks to destroy their oppressors, here and now, by any means at their disposal. Unless God is participating in this holy activity, we must reject God's love.”

James H. Cone (1938–2018) American theologian

Source: A Black Theology of Liberation (1970), p. 70

Love, God, Pain, World

“The Black Artist's role in America is to aid in the destruction of America as he knows it. His role is to report and reflect so precisely the nature of the society, and of himself, in that society, that other men will be moved by the exactness of his rendering, and if they are black men, grow strong through this moving, having seen their own strength, and weakness, and if they are white men, tremble, curse, and go mad, because they will be drenched with the filth of their evil.”

Amiri Baraka (1934–2014) African-American writer

Negro Digest, vol. 14, no. 6 (April 1965), p. 65

Men, Nature, Strong, Evil

“Tomasz Vetulani's work balances between two fascinating axes, producing an image of an artist juggling various means of expression. From intriguing and expressive objects, made by him from, say, hot white glue or black silicon, with strong social and political connotations - to subtle images-objects, evoking fleeting states, where the sensitive eye of the artist touches the sublimation of certain senses.”

Tomasz Vetulani (1965) Polish artist

Agnieszka Gołębiewska, Curatorial text accompanying exhibition There is no threat. Weapons and colour http://www.olympiagaleria.pl/en.tomasz_vetulani.html, 2017

Sense, Strong

“What does it mean, insane? A legal definition. What do I mean? I feel it, see it, but what is it? It is something they do, something they are. It is their unconsciousness…Do they ignore parts of reality? Yes. But it is more. It is their plans…Their view; it is cosmic…They see through the here, the now, into the vast black deep beyond, the unchanging. And that is fatal to life. Because eventually there will be no life; there was once only the dust particles of space, the hot hydrogen gases, nothing more, and it will come again.”

Philip K. Dick book The Man in the High Castle

The Man in the High Castle (1962)

Life, Feeling, Reality, Parting

“Jefferson Davis is categorical in pronouncing four million Americans, and all their descendants for all future time, to be "the degenerate sons of Ham", fit only to be slaves. This implies that Negroes were descended from the Canaanites. But the Canaanites were not black! Neither were the great majority of the many millions of slaves in the ancient world. We mention these facts as conclusively refuting Davis' thesis, even if there is someone not under legal constraint who is inclined to accept the lunatic notion that anyone today can be justly enslaved because of the episode described in the ninth chapter of Genesis.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

1990s, Defending the Cause of Human Freedom (1994)

World, Time, Future

““We’re still the Black Company. We still don’t leave our own behind.” Which was never strictly true but you do have to serve an ideal the best you can, lest it become debased. A law as ancient as coinage itself says bad money will drive out good. The same is true of principles, ethics and rules of conduct. If you always do the easier thing, then you cannot possible remain steadfast when it becomes necessary to take a difficult stand. You must do what you know to be right. And you do know. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred you do know and you are just making excuses because the right thing is so hard, or just inconvenient.”

Glen Cook book Water Sleeps

Source: Water Sleeps (1999), Chapter 72 (pp. 255-256)

Money, Law, Time

“I enjoyed that interview. He's a guy who not only says what he means but backs it up, too. I'll never forget the night I interviewed him. It was a rainy night at his house in L. A. and I kept looking outside on the lawn. He had this big black Doberman he called Rommel, and it sat out there in the rain eating a chaise lounge.”

Arnold Hano (1922) American writer

On Deacon Jones, as quoted in "Loquacious Sportswriter: Arnold Hano Calls 'em as He Sees 'em in World of Sports"
Sports-related

Guy, Housing, Night, Forgetting

“Today's novelist is not only limited by the thin subject matter of personal experience, but by the pinched clinical conventions of the Health generation. Faced with Othello, say, he would have to divide the man into departments, like a liberal arts course. Race relations — that's still a subject, although of course whites can't write about blacks and vice versa; sexual politics (somehow); Othello's ultimate therapy and decision to endure. Since jealousy is now curable, like TB, we can't have people dying of it anymore. A few rap sessions, some fearless touching, and a new sense of self-worth would have Othello and Iago and Hamlet and Juliet back on their feet in no time; and Fiction struggling.”

Wilfrid Sheed (1930–2011) English-American novelist and essayist

"A Moral Problem" (1974), p. 88
The Good Word & Other Words (1978)

People, Health, Jealousy, Art

“And there we have my good rabbi.... he came up so tired in the studio, and then I put him down here. There was such a real seat in that guy, so with his pants slumped. That's nice, isn't it, that long black cloak with those wide folds and that slackly beer mat. He is holding the Torah role in his arm, do you see?... I known that old rab for a lot of years already, and with Purim and Rosh HaShanah [Jewish New Year] he comes faithfully around for his douceur [tip].”

Jozef Israëls (1824–1911) Dutch painter

translation from the original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek
version in Dutch (citaat van Jozef Israëls, in het Nederlands): En dan heb je daar m'n goeie rebbe.. ..Hij kwam zo moe-gesjouwd 't atelier op, en toen heb ik hem hier neergezet. Daar zat zo'n echte zit in, in dien kerel, zoo met zoo'n uitgezakte broek.. .Da's mooi, nie-waar, die lange zwarte mantel met die wijde plooien en dat slappe viltje op.. .Hij heeft 't Seifer [de Tora-rol] in z'n arm, zie je wel?. ..Dien ouwe ribbe ken ik toch al wat 'n jaren, en met Poerim en Rausj Hasjoe [Joodse Nieuwjaar] komt ie trouw om z'n douceurtje.
Quote by Israëls, Jan. 1904, as cited in Jozef Israels, W.L. Brusse, 1905, pp. 135-136
Quotes of Jozef Israels, after 1900

Guy, Beer

“Everybody blames the Jews for killing Christ, and then the Jews try to pass it off on the Romans. I'm one of the few people that believe it was the blacks.”

Sarah Silverman (1970) American comedian and actress

The New Yorker (24 October 2005)

People, Christ

“I consider myself a pretty rounded guy. I've done pretty elite things in business, sport and academics and all of a sudden I woke up one morning and I'm a 'big, black, British, gay guy.”

John Amaechi (1970) Professional basketball player

That was frustrating at times
Commenting on people's reactions to him coming out.http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6903211.stm

Guy, Business, Sport, Time

“I was that one who wore black and—really, I’ve heard it from several people—slept with the English teacher.”

Susanna Kaysen book Girl, Interrupted

Girl, Interrupted (1994)

People, Teachers

“The dark corridor of that Central Avenue Hotel, the sinister Negro, the black room and the hopheads, and now the girl who loved a man who hated her. It was all of the same cloth, perverse, drugged in fascinating ugliness. Midnight on Temple Street, a can of marijuana between us. She lay there, her long fingers dangling to the carpet, waiting, listless, tired.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust (1939)

Love, Hate, Girl, Waiting

“A dark yet shallow sleep. A submission to exhaustion. A loss of consciousness and an avoidance of light, Yet not deep enough to avoid the turbulence on the surface while deep enough to feel the pressure from the bottom. Whatever or whoever he was sought to find the finite area where all pressures are equal and constant. To find that small pocket of weightlessness where no pressure is felt, where there is no tugging in opposite directions, no straining for a painless balance, where all of him was suspended and cushioned between the 2 crushing and yanking pressures where no pressures existed. Where no light existed. Where no time existed. Where no need or desire existed. Where there existed no blackness. There, where there existed nothing, not even a void.”

Hubert Selby Jr. book The Room

The Room (1971)

Feeling, Sleep, Light, Loss

“I hate all virtues based on food and bloated bellies;
though food and drink are good, I'm better slaked and fed
by that inhuman flame which burns in our black bowels.
I like to name that flame which burns within me God!”

Nikos Kazantzakis (1883–1957) Greek writer

Odysseus, Book XI, line 840
The Odyssey : A Modern Sequel (1938)

God, Hate, Food, Drink

“It can never be bad to have a foundation as a man — a black man. — in a time when women are dying for men. Women have started to become lovers of each other as a result of not having enough men.”

Usher (1978) American singer, songwriter, dancer and actor

From an interview with VIBE, " Caught Up http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=hSYEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA68&lpg=PA68&dq=%22It+can+never+be+bad+to+have+a+foundation+as+a+man%22+usher&source=bl&ots=znEcU5UzFB&sig=nSA9TRsN-0VmlAwizQ_1eicZRP0&hl=en&sa=X&ei=ow81T8e2JOet0QWamd2xAg&ved=0CCUQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=%22It%20can%20never%20be%20bad%20to%20have%20a%20foundation%20as%20a%20man%22%20usher&f=false" (July 2008), p. 65-71.

Women, Men, Lovers, Time

“The day I joined this Israeli and Arabs youth movement, my life began to get complicated. Suddenly it was no longer black and white.”

Jonathan Kis-Lev (1985) painter

An optimist seeks peace (Ein Optimist sucht den Frieden) http://www.schwaebische.de/home_artikel,-Ein-Optimist-sucht-den-Frieden-_arid,2456681.html, Schwäbische Zeitung, 2008-07-10

Life, Youth

“They weave a slow andante as in sleep,
Scaled yellow, swampy black, plague-spotted white;
With blue and lidless eyes at watch they keep
A treachery of silence; infinite.”

Arthur Symons (1865–1945) British poet

The Andante of Snakes, st. 1.

Sleep, Silence

“Townspeople: A black sheriff?
Blinkin: He's Black?!
Ahchoo: Why not? It worked in Blazing Saddles.”

Mel Brooks (1926) American director, writer, actor, and producer

Robin Hood: Men in Tights

“I do remember doing shows strictly in black and white, too.”

Jim Henson (1936–1990) American puppeteer

Page 68.
Interview with Judy Harris (1982)

“In the extremity of our distress, we called upon the black man to help us save the Republic; and, amid the very thunders of battle, we made a covenant with him, sealed both with his blood and with ours, and witnessed by Jehovah, that, when the nation was redeemed, he should be free, and share with us its glories and its blessings.”

James A. Garfield (1831–1881) American politician, 20th President of the United States (in office in 1881)

1860s, Oration at Ravenna, Ohio (1865)
Context: In the great crisis of the war, God brought us face to face with the mighty truth, that we must lose our own freedom or grant it to the slave. In the extremity of our distress, we called upon the black man to help us save the Republic; and, amid the very thunders of battle, we made a covenant with him, sealed both with his blood and with ours, and witnessed by Jehovah, that, when the nation was redeemed, he should be free, and share with us its glories and its blessings. The Omniscient Witness will appear in judgment against us if we do not fulfill that covenant. Have we done it? Have we given freedom to the black man? What is freedom? Is it mere negation? Is it the bare privilege of not being chained, of not being bought and sold, branded and scourged? If this is all, then freedom is a bitter mockery, a cruel delusion, and it may well be questioned whether slavery were not better. But liberty is no negation. It is a substantial, tangible reality. It is the realization of those imperishable truths of the Declaration, 'that all men are created equal'; that the sanction of all just government is 'the consent of the governed.' Can these be realized until each man has a right to be heard on all matters relating to himself? The plain truth is, that each man knows his own interest best It has been said, 'If he is compelled to pay, if he may be compelled to fight, if he be required implicitly to obey, he should be legally entitled to be told what for; to have his consent asked, and his opinion counted at what it is worth. There ought to be no pariahs in a full-grown and civilized nation, no persons disqualified except through their own default.' I would not insult your intelligence by discussing so plain a truth, had not the passion and prejudice of this generation called in question the very axioms of the Declaration.

Help

“I would like to believe that if we had a freer society, it would take care of blacks and whites and everybody equally because we're all individuals. To me, that is so important. But if we had equal justice under the law, I think it would be a big improvement. If we had probably a repeal of most of the federal laws on drugs and the unfairness on how blacks are treated with these drugs laws, it would be a tremendous improvement.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Your Legacy on Race http://www.channels.com/episodes/13077589?page=2, Republican Candidates "All-American Presidential Forum" http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=75913#axzz1hrPWCrSG (2007) 2000s, 2006-2009

Justice, Law, Thinking

“Presently they saw their Mother coming out of the drawing-room with a visitor following her. Jane and Michael could see that the newcomer had shiny black hair — "Rather like a wooden Dutch doll," whispered Jane. And that she was thin, with large feet and hands, and small, rather peering blue-eyes.
"You'll find that they are very nice children," Mrs. Banks was saying.
Michael's elbow gave a sharp dig at Jane's ribs.
"And that they give no trouble at all," continued Mrs. Banks uncertainly, as if she herself didn't really believe what she was saying. They heard the visitor sniff as though she didn't either.
"Now, about reference —" Mrs. Banks went on.
"Oh, I make it a rule never to give references," said the other firmly.”

P. L. Travers (1899–1996) Australian-British novelist, actress and journalist

Source: Mary Poppins (1934), Ch. 1 "East-Wind"

Children, Drawing

“We are in the black theater of nonexistence. In an eye blink the curtain is up, the stage ablaze, for the vast drama of ourselves.”

Herman Wouk (1915–2019) Pulitzer Prize-winning American author whose novels include The Caine Mutiny, The Winds of War and War and …

On Genesis I as his favorite opening passage.
New York Times (June 2, 1985).

“Segregation was wrong when it was forced by white people, and I believe it is still wrong when it is requested by black people.”

Coretta Scott King (1927–2006) American author, activist, and civil rights leader. Wife of Martin Luther King, Jr.

As quoted in The Last Word : A Treasury of Women's Quotes (1992), by Carolyn Warner, p. 99

People

“"With these victories to which you refer, the Confederate States do seem to have retrieved their falling fortunes," Lord Lyons said. "I have no reason to doubt that Her Majesty's government will soon recognize that fact." "Thank you, your excellency," Lee said quietly. Even had Lincoln refused to give up the war- not impossible, with the Mississippi valley and many coastal pockets held by virtue of Northern naval power and hence relatively secure from rebel AK-47s- recognition by the greatest empire on earth would have assured Confederate independence. Lord Lyons held up a hand. "Many among our upper classes will be glad enough to welcome you to the family of nations, both as a result of your successful fight for self-government and because you have given a black eye to the often vulgar democracy of the United States. Others, however, will judge your republic a sham, with its freedom for white men based upon Negro slavery, a notion loathsome to the civilized world. I should be less than candid if I failed to number myself among that latter group." "Slavery was not the reason the Southern states chose to leave the Union," Lee said. He was aware he sounded uncomfortable, but went on, "We sought only to enjoy the sovereignty guaranteed us under the constitution, a right the North wrongly denied us. Our watchword all along has been, we wish but to be left alone."”

Harry Turtledove book The Guns of the South

Source: The Guns of the South (1992), p. 182-183

Men, War, World, Family

“Rate of change is this mathematics known as Calculus. … Now I hope you understand this, because I've never been able to make head nor tail of it. It must be some sort of a Black Magic operation, started out by the Luce cult — some immoral people who are operating up in New York City, Rockefeller Plaza — been thoroughly condemned by the whole society. Anyway, their rate-of-change theory — I've never seen any use for that mathematics, by the way — I love that mathematics, because it — I asked an engineer, one time, who was in his 6th year of engineering, if he'd ever used Calculus, and he told me yeah, once, once I did, he said. When did you use it? And he said I used it once. Let me see, what did you use it on? Oh yeah. Something on the rate-of-change of steam particles in boilers. And then we went out and tested it and found the answer was wrong.”

L. Ron Hubbard (1911–1986) American science fiction author, philosopher, cult leader, and the founder of the Church of Scientology

Philadelphia Doctorate Course, Tape #58 (November 1952) http://www.rr.cistron.nl/xenu/quotes.htm.

Love, People, Hope, Way

“As Ralph Ellison wrote more than 35 years ago, 'Why is it so often true that when critics confront the American as Negro, they suddenly drop their advanced critical armament and revert with an air of confident superiority to quite primitive modes of analysis?' Those matters accomplished by whites are routinely subjected to sophisticated modes of analysis. But the when the selfsame matters are accomplished by blacks, the opaque racial prism of analysis precludes such sophistication, and all is seen in black and white. And some who would not venture onto the more sophisticated analytical turf are quite content to play in the minor leagues of primitive harping. The more things change, the more they remain the same.”

Clarence Thomas (1948) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

1990s, I Am a Man, a Black Man, an American (1998)

Confidence, Change

“Soon after this the blacks who brought me on board went off, and left me abandoned to despair. I now saw myself deprived of all chance of returning to my native country, or even the least glimpse of hope of gaining the shore, which I now considered as friendly; and I even wished for my former slavery in preference to my present situation, which was filled with horrors of every kind, still heightened by my ignorance of what I was to undergo. I was not long suffered to indulge my grief; I was soon put down under the decks, and there I received such a salutation in my nostrils as I had never experienced in my life: so that, with the loathsomeness of the stench, and crying together, I became so sick and low that I was not able to eat, nor had I the least desire to taste any thing. I now wished for the last friend, death, to relieve me; but soon, to my grief, two of the white men offered me eatables; and, on my refusing to eat, one of them held me fast by the hands, and laid me across I think the windlass, and tied my feet, while the other flogged me severely. I had never experienced any thing of this kind before; and although, not being used to the water, I naturally feared that element the first time I saw it, yet nevertheless, could I have got over the nettings, I would have jumped over the side, but I could not; and, besides, the crew used to watch us very closely who were not chained down to the decks, lest we should leap into the water: and I have seen some of these poor African prisoners most severely cut for attempting to do so, and hourly whipped for not eating. This indeed was often the case with myself.”

Olaudah Equiano (1745–1797) African abolitionist

Chap. II
The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African (1789)

Life, Death, Men, Fear

“When it is storming and raining, thundering and lightening I am in my element; nature must be seen in action. Then outside, I put on my jacket, put my feet in clogs, put on a hat and start on a march. When the showers settle down, with charcoal or black chalk [I] make a scribble, to keep a firm grip on what one sees. When working out, hue and color come smoothly back into the memory.”

Jan Hendrik Weissenbruch (1824–1903) Dutch painter of the Hague School (1824-1903)

version in original Dutch / citaat van J. H. Weissenbruch, in het Nederlands: Als het stormt en regent, als het dondert en bliksemt ben ik in mijn element; de natuur moet men in werking zien. Dan buiten, trek ik mijn jekker aan, steek mijn voeten in klompen, zet een soort hoed op en ga op marsch. Als de buien bedaren, met houtskool of zwart krijt een krabbel gemaakt om vast te houden wat je ziet. Bij het uitwerken komen toon en kleur vanzelf in de herinnering.
Source: J. H. Weissenbruch', (n.d.), pp. 29-30

Color, Nature, Memory

“As there were black swans, though civilized people had existed for three thousand years on the earth without meeting with them…The uniform experience, therefore, of the inhabitants of the known world, agreeing in a common result, without one known instance of deviation from that result, is not always sufficient to establish a general conclusion.”

John Stuart Mill book A System of Logic

A System of Logic (1843)

People, World

“We loved each other. No faithfulness my love did lack.
Love, you divine flame; you hole of colour: black.”

Paul-Jean Toulet (1867–1920) French poet

Coples

Love, Faith

“You can play the piano with the white keys only or you can play it with only the black keys. But for harmony you must use the black and the white keys.”

Ernest Debrah (1947–2016) Ghanian politician

On the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA), in Will Ross, " Africans wary of Europe's trade offer http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7134407.stm", BBC (8 December, 2007).

“Starting from Einstein's theory of general relativity, Oppenheimer and Snyder found solutions… that described what happens to a massive star when it has exhausted its supplies of nuclear energy. The star collapses gravitationally and disappears from the visible universe, leaving behind only an intense gravitational field to mark its presence. The star remains in a state of permanent free fall, collapsing endlessly inward into the gravitational pit without ever reaching the bottom. … In my opinion, the black hole is incomparably the most exciting and the most important consequence of general relativity. But Einstein … was actively hostile to the idea of black holes. … Oddly enough, Oppenheimer too in later life was uninterested in black holes, although… they were his most important contribution to science. … Oppenheimer in his later years believed that the only problem worthy of attention of a serious theoretical physicist was the discovery of fundamental equations of physics. Einstein certainly felt the same way.”

Freeman Dyson (1923) theoretical physicist and mathematician

The Scientist As Rebel (2006)

Life, Hostility, Way, Star

“Affirmative action, rightly understood, would justify a wide variety of outreach programs for those whose lives have been stultified by poverty, broken families, bad schools, and neighborhoods filled with drugs, crime and gangs. One can heartily commend a program for tutoring young blacks, or young whites, who had never had a genuine teacher in a real classroom. One cannot, however, commend a program of raising the grades of young blacks, but not young whites, without having raised their skills. And what possible justification can there be there for giving scholarship assistance to the child of a black middle-class family, while denying it to a poor white? Can one imagine a more crass disregard for the genuine meaning of the Equal Protection Clause? The priests of this new religion of 'affirmative action' are not without material interests. Hundreds of millions of corporate dollars are spent annually on 'sensitivity training'. Within the universities, centers for black, brown and women's (i. e., feminist) studies are being established, with vast amount of patronage bestowed upon them. Traditional courses in Plato, Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Shakespeare and the Bible continue to appear in the catalogs, but they are increasingly taught by 'deconstructionists', who have no interest in the texts, but only in subjective reactions to the texts.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

1990s, The Party of Lincoln vs. The Party of Bureaucrats (1996)

Women, School, Family, Religion

“From high black walls, gleaming vaguely with rain,
Each yellow light looked down like a golden eye.
They trembled from coign to coign, and tower to tower,
Along high terraces quicker than dream they flew.
And some of them steadily glowed, and some soon vanished,
And some strange shadows threw.”

Conrad Aiken (1889–1973) American novelist and poet

The House of Dust (1916 - 1917)

Dreams, Light

“"Strike one" the Umpire said.From the bleachers black with people there rose a sullen roar,
Like the beating of the storm-waves on a stern and distant shore,
"Kill him! Kill the Umpire!" shouted someone from the stand —
And it's likely they'd have done it had not Casey raised his hand.”

Ernest Thayer Casey at the Bat

Source: Casey at the Bat, Lines 32-36.

People, Distant

“This is the sentiment of the chosen leader of the Black Republican party; and can you doubt that it is not entertained by every solitary member of that same party? You cannot, I think. He is a representative man; his sentiments are the sentiments of his party; his principles of political action are the principles of political action of his party. I say, then; it is true, at least, that the Republican party of the North hates slavery.”

Henry L. Benning (1814–1875) Confederate Army general

Speech to the Virginia Convention (1861)
Context: These are pregnant statements; they avow a sentiment, a political principle of action, a sentiment of hatred to slavery as extreme as hatred can exist. The political principle here avowed is, that his action against slavery is not to be restrained by the Constitution of the United States, as interpreted by the Supreme Court of the United States. I say, if you can find any degree of hatred greater than that, I should like to see it. This is the sentiment of the chosen leader of the Black Republican party; and can you doubt that it is not entertained by every solitary member of that same party? You cannot, I think. He is a representative man; his sentiments are the sentiments of his party; his principles of political action are the principles of political action of his party. I say, then; it is true, at least, that the Republican party of the North hates slavery.

Hate, Thinking

“When the National Anthem is played, I salute because I am a black man born and raised in the inner city afforded the opportunity for greatness in my own right.”

Allen West (politician) (1961) American politician; retired United States Army officer

2010s, Message from a non-oppressed black man to Colin Kaepernick (28 August 2016)

“All of us can be influenced through psychological techniques. For example, if I say “don’t think of a black cat” what do you do? You think of a black cat because the command ‘think of a black cat’ was there in the sentence. Techniques like this can be used to influence people’s thoughts, behaviour, even their memory.”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

TV Series and Specials (Includes DVDs), Mind Control (1999–2000) or Inside Your Mind on DVD

People, Cats, Thinking, Memory

“Black is a pearl in a woman's eye.”

George Chapman An Humorous Day's Mirth

An Humorous Day's Mirth; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

“It can hardly be argued that the ubiquity of the Playboy Bunny logo or its popularity with young girls are positive developments, but it must be understood that what is being objected to here, as elsewhere, is not sex, but symbol: the black-and-white, liplesss, featureless symbol of a perky, prosthetic sexuality whose alienation from the flesh and intimacy of real sex can be mass-produced.”

Laurie Penny book Meat Market: Female Flesh Under Capitalism

Source: Meat Market: Female Flesh Under Capitalism (2010), Chapter One, Bunny and Brand

Sex, Girl

“I will dispense for now from discussion of the moral character of the president's Charlottesville statements. Whether he intended to or not, what he communicated caused racists to rejoice, minorities to weep, and the vast heart of America to mourn. His apologists strain to explain that he didn't mean what we heard. But what we heard is now the reality, and unless it is addressed by the president as such, with unprecedented candor and strength, there may commence an unraveling of our national fabric.The leaders of our branches of military service have spoken immediately and forcefully, repudiating the implications of the president's words. Why? In part because the morale and commitment of our forces-made up and sustained by men and women of all races--could be in the balance. Our allies around the world are stunned and our enemies celebrate; America's ability to help secure a peaceful and prosperous world is diminished. And who would want to come to the aid of a country they perceive as racist if ever the need were to arise, as it did after 9/11?In homes across the nation, children are asking their parents what this means. Jews, blacks, Hispanics, Muslims are as much a part of America as whites and Protestants. But today they wonder. Where might this lead? To bitterness and tears, or perhaps to anger and violence?The potential consequences are severe in the extreme. Accordingly, the president must take remedial action in the extreme. He should address the American people, acknowledge that he was wrong, apologize. State forcefully and unequivocally that racists are 100% to blame for the murder and violence in Charlottesville. Testify that there is no conceivable comparison or moral equivalency between the Nazis--who brutally murdered millions of Jews and who hundreds of thousands of Americans gave their lives to defeat--and the counter-protestors who were outraged to see fools parading the Nazi flag, Nazi armband and Nazi salute. And once and for all, he must definitively repudiate the support of David Duke and his ilk and call for every American to banish racists and haters from any and every association.This is a defining moment for President Trump. But much more than that, it is a moment that will define America in the hearts of our children. They are watching, our soldiers are watching, the world is watching. Mr. President, act now for the good of the country.”

Mitt Romney (1947) American businessman and politician

Facebook statement https://www.facebook.com/mittromney/posts/10154652303536121 (18 August 2017) 2017

Women, Men, Children, People

“A mob of black demonstrators, led by the "Rev." Al Sharpton, occupied and closed the Statue of Liberty recently, demanding that New York be renamed Martin Luther King City 'to reclaim it for our people.'
Hmmm. I hate to agree with the Rev. Al, but maybe a name change is in order. Welfaria? Zooville? Rapetown? Dirtburg? Lazyopolis?
But Al, the Statue of Liberty? Next time, hold that demonstration at a food stamp bureau or a crack house.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Disputed, Newsletters, Ron Paul Political Report

Hate, People, Food, Change

“[M]en who work to make it as computer whizzes or owners of black Porsches[…] are confused when they're told they are not vulnerable enough. We can't fall in love with men who appear invulnerable and expect vulnerability. Why did he want a black Porsche? Because he never saw an ugly woman get out of one.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: Why Men Are the Way They Are (1988), p. 106.

Love, Men, Appearance

“the city was the same, but I was afraid. The streets lurked with danger. The tall buildings forming black canyons were traps to kill you when the earth shook. The pavement might open. The street cars might topple.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust (1939)

Cars

“Black propaganda and negative politics don't and won't work here/elsewhere simply because of one thing - it is based on a lie.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

Francis Escudero Twitter feed: @SayChiz (3:30 p.m. 2015 December 28).
2015, Twitter Feed

Lie

“The point to be made clear is that, whatever may be our temperament, or our power in the presence of nature, we have to render what we actually see, forgetting everything that appeared before our own time. Which, I think, should enable the artist to express his personality to the full, be it large or small. Now that I am an old man, about seventy, the sensations of colour which produce light give rise to abstractions that prevent me from covering my canvas, and from trying to define the outlines of objects when their points of contact are tenuous and delicate; with the result that my image or picture is incomplete. For another thing, the planes become confused, superimposed; hence Neo-Impressionism (initiated by Seurat and Paul Signac, ed., where everything is outlined in black, an error which must be uncompromisingly rejected. And nature, if consulted, shows us how to achieve this aim.”

Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) French painter

Quote from Cézanne's letter to Émile Bernard, 23 October 1905; as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p. 180
Quotes of Paul Cezanne, after 1900

Error, Nature, Thinking, Light

“Now, Lincoln' position was consistent throughout the debates. A great deal is said—Dr. DiLorenzo says it, but it's been said countless times before—that Lincoln used racist language in the debates. That’s not true. Now what Lincoln argued for in the debates was the recognition of the natural rights of black people, when Douglas said that if the people of Nebraska are good enough to govern themselves, they certainly are good enough to govern a few miserable Negroes. And Lincoln replied by saying, "I doubt not that the people of Nebraska are as good as the average of people elsewhere, what I say is that no man is good enough to govern another without his consent."”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

2000s, The Real Abraham Lincoln: A Debate (2002), The Lincoln-Douglas Debates

People, Nature, Time

“Apart from the greatness of Bizos for his role in the dismantling of apartheid, defending Mandela etc, he also manifested a genius in his role as a leading member of the conservative South African Greek community, by drawing historical parallels between the 400 years of slavery that Greece had suffered under the Ottoman Turks and the 300 years or so of repression and cruelty suffered by the Southern African black tribes and mixed race people under the British and then under the Nationalist Afrikaner rule. By using this strategy Bizos was able to balance his fight for justice in South Africa, and synchronously lead the very conservative Greek community in a more progressive direction.”

Angelique Rockas South African actress and founder of Internationalist Theatre, London

On George Bizos
Interview on Helenism .net (September 2011)

People, Justice, Communication, Suffering

“It is the residue of animal and vegetable putrefaction, and is a black body; when dry it is pulverulent, and when wet has a soft, greasy feel… It is the produce of organic power—a compound of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen, such as cannot be chemically composed.”

Albrecht Thaer (1752–1828) German agronomist and an avid supporter of the humus theory for plant nutrition

p. 336 http://books.google.com/books?id=zAhJAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA336; Cited in: Edmund Ruffin An Essay on Calcareous Manures, Volume 1. J.W. Randolph, 1852. p. 85. Ruffin summarizes: "Humus" is the term used by this author for the decomposed vegetable and other organic matter which is more or less mixed with all surface soil, and which gives to soil all its fertility, and furnishes all the food of plants. The Principles of Agriculture, 1844, Section III: Agronomy

Feeling, Animals

“Half-wracked prejudice leaped forth
"Rip down all hate," I screamed
Lies that life is black and white
Spoke from my skull.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Another Side of Bob Dylan (1964), My Back Pages

Life, Hate

“No funeral gloom, my dears, when I am gone,
corpse-gazing, tears, black raiment, graveyard grimness.
Think of me as withdrawn into the dimness,
yours still, you mine.
Remember all the best of our past moments,
and forget the rest;
and so to where I wait, come gently on.”

William Allingham (1824–1889) Irish man of letters and poet

Poem: No funeral gloom - part of funeral of actress Ellen Terry 1928.

Thinking, Tear, Waiting, Past

“We have for a long time hesitated to adopt and carry out the only principle which can solve that difficulty and give peace, strength and security to the republic, and that is the principle of absolute equality. We are a country of all extremes, ends and opposites. The most conspicuous example of composite nationality in the world. Our people defy all the ethnological and logical classifications. In races we range all the way from black to white, with intermediate shades which, as in the apocalyptic vision, no man can name or number.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

1860s, Our Composite Nationality (1869)

People, World, Peace, Way

“Listen! what is life? It is a feather, it is the seed of the grass, blown hither and thither, sometimes multiplying itself and dying in the act, sometimes carried away into the heavens. But if that seed be good and heavy it may perchance travel a little way on the road it wills. It is well to try and journey one’s road and to fight with the air. Man must die. At the worst he can but die a little sooner…
Out of the dark we came, into the dark we go. Like a storm-driven bird at night we fly out of the Nowhere; for a moment our wings are seen in the light of the fire, and, lo! we are gone again into the Nowhere. Life is nothing. Life is all. It is the Hand with which we hold off Death. It is the glow-worm that shines in the night-time and is black in the morning; it is the white breath of the oxen in winter; it is the little shadow that runs across the grass and loses itself at sunset.”

H. Rider Haggard book King Solomon's Mines

Source: King Solomon's Mines (1885), Chapter 5, "Our March into the Desert"

Life, Death, Way, Travel

“Even our own cadaver-bones shall not hinder us from standing our ground until the very last, proud and tired in the face of the black wall that surrounds us.”

Max Beckmann (1884–1950) German painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor and writer

Beckman's Diary, 10 October 1943, Amsterdam; as cited on: 'Arts in exile' http://kuenste-im-exil.de 1940s

“The entrapment of black voters in the Democratic party has been a disaster, and it’s one of the reasons that progress on.”

Crispin Sartwell (1958) American philosopher

White Liberals: We’re Not Racist (August 29, 2016)

“Go to Dahomey, Ashantee, Caffraria, Malaisia, — anywhere; search out the rudest people on earth; draw a picture of its vices and cruelties, make it as black as you can, and we will parallel it by pictures of Greece under Pericles and of Rome under Cicero.”

Edward Thomson (1810–1870) American bishop

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 135.

People, Search, Drawing

“All things come to me in black and white like virtue and crime. Yes, black and white are the two elements which concern me. It is my fortune, or misfortune, that I can see neither all in black nor all in white... I cannot help realizing both, for only in the two, only in black and white, can I see God as a unity creating again and again a great and eternally changing terrestrial drama.”

Max Beckmann (1884–1950) German painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor and writer

Source: 1930s, On my Painting (1938), pp. 13-14

God, Change, Help

“It seems wrong that out of this bird,
Black, bold, a suggestion of dark
Places about it, there yet should come
Such rich music, as though the notes’
Ore were changed to a rare metal
At one touch of that bright bill.”

R.S. Thomas (1913–2000) Welsh poet

"A Blackbird Singing"
Poetry For Supper (1958)

Music, Bird, Change

“This is the battle between day and night… I see black light.”

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist

C'est ici le combat du jour et de la nuit... Je vois de la lumière noire.
Last words (1885-05-22); quoted in Olympio, ou la vie de Victor Hugo by André Maurois (1954)

Light, Night

“Being black in America has little to do with skin color. Being black means that your heart, your soul, your mind, and your body are where the dispossessed are.”

James H. Cone (1938–2018) American theologian

Source: Black Theology and Black Power (1969), p. 151

Color, Soul, Heart

“Black (for such the quarries yield
Where the sun hath never shone,
Which night only rests upon,
Was the marble floor, which gave
Mirror like some clear dark wave.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The London Literary Gazette, 1831

Sun, Night

“[I]n the words of Chairman Mao, 'It's darkest before it's totally black.”

John McCain (1936–2018) politician from the United States

In response to a reporter's question, "Which is more likely: making progress in Iraq or you winning the nomination?" (July 2007) 2000s, 2007 Source: Liasson, Mara. McCain Nearly Broke But Stays Course http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12000037. National Public Radio. July 7, 2007.

“I don't believe racism in this country today holds anybody back in a big way. Are there some elements of racism? Yes, it gets back to if we don't grow this economy, that is a ripple effect for every economic level, and because blacks are more disproportionately unemployed, they get hit the worst when economic policies don't work. That's where it starts.”

Herman Cain (1945) American writer, businessman and activist

State of the Union
2011-10-09
Television, quoted in * Cain: Racism not holding anyone back
Political Ticker
2011-10-09
Kevin
Liptak
CNN
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2011/10/09/cain-racism-not-holding-anyone-back/

Way, Country

“Blacks got federal passports implying that they were citizens… The Articles of Confederation stated that "the free inhabitants of these states… shall be entitled to all privileges of immunities of free citizens in the several states", Congress voted down South Carolina's proposal to insert the word "white" into this clause.”

Thomas G. West (1945) American academic

2000s, Vindicating the Founders (2001)

“Obama’s manner in dealing with other people and acting in the world fully exemplifies the cheerful impersonal friendliness—the middle distance—that marks American sociability. (Now allow me to speak as a critic. Remember Madame de Staël’s meetings that deprive us of solitude without affording us company? Or Schopenhauer’s porcupines, who shift restlessly from getting cold at a distance to prickling one another at close quarters, until they settle into some acceptable compromise position?) The cheerful impersonal friendliness serves to mask recesses of loneliness and secretiveness in the American character, and no less with Obama than with anyone else. He is enigmatic—and seemed so as much then as now—in a characteristically American way…. Moreover, he excelled at the style of sociability that is most prized in the American professional and business class and serves as the supreme object of education in the top prep schools: how to cooperate with your peers by casting on them a spell of charismatic seduction, which you nevertheless disguise under a veneer of self-depreciation and informality. Obama did not master this style in prep school, but he became a virtuoso at it nevertheless, as the condition of preferment in American society that it is. As often happens, the outsider turned out to be better at it than the vast majority of the insiders…. Together with the meritocratic educational achievements, the mastery of the preferred social style turns Obama into what is, in a sense, the first American elite president—that is the first who talks and acts as a member of the American elite—since John Kennedy …. Obama's mixed race, his apparent and assumed blackness, his non-elite class origins and lack of inherited money, his Third-World childhood experiences—all this creates the distance of the outsider, while the achieved elite character makes the distance seem less threatening.”

Roberto Mangabeira Unger (1947) Brazilian philosopher and politician

Quoted in David Remnick, The Bridgeː The Life and Rise of Barack Obama (2010), p. 185-6
On Barack Obama

Money, People, Secret, World

“It is fashionable to suggest that cyberspace is some kind of _island of the blessed_ where people are free to indulge and express their Individuality…this is not true…. i have seen many people spill their guts on-line, and i did so myself until…i began to see that i had commodified myself. commodification means that you turn something into a product which has a money-value. in the nineteenth century, commodities were made in factories…by workers who were mostly exploited…. i created my interior thoughts as a means of production for the corporation that owned the board i was posting to…and that commodity was being sold to other commodity/consumer entities as entertainment… [Cyberspace] is a black hole. It absorbs energy and personality and then re-presents it as an emotional spectacle.”

Carmen Hermosillo Community manager, essayist, poet, research analyst

"Pandora's Vox", as cited in Curtis, Adam, 2011, All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace, BBC.

Money, People, Fashion, Personality

“The Irish had tough times, but little compares to the experience on our soil of black Americans. That experience should be part of every American’s consciousness, and law enforcement’s role in that experience—including in recent times—must be remembered. It is our cultural inheritance.”

James Comey (1960) American lawyer and the seventh director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)

2010s, Hard Truths: Law Enforcement (2015)

Law, Time, Parting

“I hate race discrimination most intensely and in all its manifestations. I have fought it all during my life; I fight it now, and will do so until the end of my days. Even although I now happen to be tried by one whose opinion I hold in high esteem, I detest most violently the set-up that surrounds me here. It makes me feel that I am a black man in a white man's court. This should not be.”

Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) President of South Africa, anti-apartheid activist

1960s, First court statement (1962)

Life, Hate, Feeling, Fight

“Do they find in the history of St. Domingo, and in the present condition of Jamaica, under the recent experiments which have been made upon the institution of slavery in the liberation of the blacks, before God, in his wisdom, designed it should be done — do they there find anything to stimulate them to future exertion in the cause of abolition? Or should they not find there satisfactory evidence that their past course was founded in error?”

Jefferson Davis (1808–1889) President of the Confederate States of America

Speech, 1850
1850s

Wisdom, God, Error, History

“All of a sudden he knew. Shadrach was rabbit's name. It even sounded black! He tried it on his tongue. He listened to it. Shadrach.”

Meindert DeJong book Shadrach

Shadrach (1957)

“Draw all kind of everyday object placed, in such a way that they have in them the life of the man or woman – corsets that have just been removed, for example, and which retain the form of the body. Do a series in aquatint on mourning, different blacks – black veils of deep mourning floating on the face – black gloves – mourning carriages, undertaker’s vehicles – carriages like Venetian gondolas. On smoke – smoker’s smoke, pipes, cigarettes, cigars – smoke from locomotives, from tall factory chimneys, from steam boats, etc. On evening – infinite variety of subjects in cafes, different tones of glass robes reflected in the mirrors. On bakery, bread. Series of baker's boys, seen in the cellar itself or through the basement windows from the street – backs the colour of the pink flour – beautiful curves of dough – still-life's of different breads, large, oval, long, round, etc. Studies in color of the yellows, pinks, grays, whites of bread…… Neither monuments nor houses have ever been done from below, close up as they appear when you walk down the street. [a working note in which Degas planned series of views of modern Paris, the same time when he sketched the backstreet brothels, making graphic unflinching and even his realistic 'pornographic' sketches he called his 'glimpses through the keyhole', in which he also experimented with perspectives]”

Edgar Degas (1834–1917) French artist

Quote from Degas' Notebooks; Clarendon Press, Oxford 1976, nos 30 & 34 circa 1877; as quoted in The private lives of the Impressionists, Sue Roe, Harpen Collins Publishers, New York 2006, p. 182
quotes, undated

Life, Beauty, Color, Way

“The executive branch has sometimes abused its mandate -- most famously, with the surveillance of Dr. King -- but not as much as the Church Committee would have us believe. The FBI's political spying was not the creation of right-wing reactionaries, and it was not systematically targeted at the innocent grassroots left. It was begun by our most liberal of presidents, FDR, who ordered the surveillance of fascist sympathizers in 1936. The most controversial domestic Counterinteligence Programs (Cointelpro) were actually born in the Kennedy administration, as an attempt to disrupt the Ku Klux Klan. The FBI also disrupted "Black Nationalist Hate Groups," including the Black Panthers. This was not political repression; it was a largely successful effort to deal with violent militant groups.”

Mark Riebling (1963) American writer

Uncuff the FBI: Congress Must Undo the Church Committe's Damage (2002)

Hate, Effort, Success

“Hip-Hop's last hope like Obi-Wan Kenobi
Through your television I'm shining light like a train
Comin out like earthworms when it rains, bringing it
like the C. I. A. be bringing in crack cocaine bailing out of planes
with the George Bush connections, I push Reflection
like I'm selling izm, like a dealer building the system
Supply and the demand it's all just capitalism
Niggaz don't sell crack cause they like to see blacks smoke
Niggaz sell crack cause they broke”

Talib Kweli (1975) American rapper

The Manifesto, Lyricist Lounge, Vol. 1 (1998)
Albums, Singles and compilations

Hope, Light, Training

“I am busy on a portrait of my self and my aunt and my two cousins, I will show it to you when you get back. I am doing it as if I were doing a picture. I've got to do it well, because I want to leave it as a momento... The older one is really a lovely thing, the younger one has the devil in her as well as the kindness of an angel. I am doing them with their black dresses and little white pinafores which suit them delightfully. I have ideas for the picture's background running through my head. I would like a certain gracefulness with a nobleness of feeling that I don't know how to describe.”

Edgar Degas (1834–1917) French artist

Quote in a letter (27 November, 1858) to Degas' friend and painter Gustave Moreau; as quoted in More unpublished Letters of Degas, Theodore Reff, Art Bulletin LI, No. 3., Sept. 1969, pp. 282-283
1855 - 1875

Love, Angels, Feeling, Idea

Quotes about blackness page 14

Quotes about blackness
page 14