Quotes about blackness
page 16

“Indeed much of the literature written about black folks in the post-civil rights era emphasized the need for jobs. Material advancement was deemed the pressing agenda. Mental health concerns were not a high priority.”

Bell Hooks (1952) American author, feminist, and social activist

Rock My Soul (2003)

Health, Literature

“(If America abandons affirmative action, the country will take a giant step towards race war because there are) armies of raging blacks and furious Hispanics who would go ballistic over effectuation of the proposed campaigns to roll back the meager gains that nonwhites have made in America during a cruel century.”

Carl Rowan (1925–2000) American journalist

Quoington Star article entitled "Has President Nixon Gone Crazy?", "The Coming Race War in America: A Wake-up Call" (1996)

War, Rage, Country

“I am heartily glad that Elgin and Grant determined to burn down the Summer Palace and that "the blackness of ashes shall mark where it stood"… It was absolutely necessary to stamp by some such permanent record our indignation at the treachery and brutality of these Tartars, for Chinese they are not.”

Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston (1784–1865) British politician

Letter to Sidney Herbert (20 December 1860), quoted in Jasper Ridley, Lord Palmerston (London: Constable, 1970), pp. 538-539.
1860s

Summer

“With what moral authority can they speak of human rights — the rulers of a nation in which the millionaire and beggar coexist; the Indian is exterminated; the black man is discriminated against; the woman is prostituted; and the great masses of Chicanos, Puerto Ricans, and Latin Americans are scorned, exploited, and humiliated? How can they do this — the bosses of an empire where the mafia, gambling, and child prostitution are imposed; where the CIA organizes plans of global subversion and espionage, and the Pentagon creates neutron bombs capable of preserving material assets and wiping out human beings; an empire that supports reaction and counter-revolution all over the world; that protects and promotes the exploitation by monopolies of the wealth and the human resources of whole continents, unequal exchange, a protectionist policy, an incredible waste of natural resources, and a system of hunger for the world?”

Fidel Castro (1926–2016) former First Secretary of the Communist Party and President of Cuba

Speech on the 25th anniversary of the Moncada Barracks attack (26 July 1978) http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/discursos/1978/esp/f260778e.html

Hunger, World, Support, Nature

“Every creature, every work of God, is admirably well made; but if any one appears imperfect in our eyes, it does not belong to us to criticise it. Perhaps that which we do not find right in its kind, turns to our advantage, without our being able to perceive it. Let us look at the state of the heavens, one while the sun shines, another time it does not appear; now the weather is fine; again it is unpleasant; one day is hot, another is cold; another time it is rainy, snowy or cloudy; every thing is variable and inconstant. Let us look at the surface of the earth: here the ground is flat; there it is hilly and mountainous; in other places it is sandy; in others it is barren; and elsewhere it is productive. Let us, in thought, go into an orchard or forest. What do we see? Trees high or low, large or small, upright or crooked, fruitful or unfruitful. Let us look at the birds of the air, and at the fishes of the sea, nothing resembles another thing. Let us look at the beasts. We see among the same kinds some of different forms, of different dimensions, domestic or wild, harmless or ferocious, useful or useless, pleasing or hideous. Some are bred for men's sakes; some for their own pleasures and amusements; some are of no use to us. There are faults in their organization as well as in that of men. Those who are acquainted with the veterinary art, know this well; but as for us who have not made a study of this science, we seem not to discover or remark these faults. Let us now come to ourselves. Our intellectual faculties as well as our corporeal organization have their imperfections. There are faculties both of the mind and heart, which education improve; there are others which it does not correct. I class in this number, idiotism, imbecility, dulness. But nothing can correct the infirmities of the bodily organization, such as deafness, blindness, lameness, palsy, crookedness, ugliness. The sight of a beautiful person does not make another so likewise, a blind person does not render another blind. Why then should a deaf person make others so also? Why are we Deaf and Dumb? Is it from the difference of our ears? But our ears are like yours; is it that there may be some infirmity? But they are as well organized as yours. Why then are we Deaf and Dumb? I do not know, as you do not know why there are infirmities in your bodies, nor why there are among the human kind, white, black, red and yellow men. The Deaf and Dumb are everywhere, in Asia, in Africa, as well as in Europe and America. They existed before you spoke of them and before you saw them.”

Laurent Clerc (1785–1869) French-American deaf educator

Statement of 1818, quoted in Through Deaf Eyes: A Photographic History of an American Community (2007) by Douglas C. Baynton, Jack R. Gannon, and Jean Lindquist Bergey

Men, God, Pleasure, Education

“The truth is that it is a culture of dependency as promulgated by the race-baiters and new plantation overseers of the inner city that has created what we’re seeing play out in Baltimore. There is where the blame lies, but there are very few who are willing to admit just that. Remember what ESPN sports commentator Stephen A. Smith said? He wished that for one voting cycle, the black community would vote Republican. Heck, they could do no worse — and look, even the people of the State of Maryland decided to try something different and elected a Republican governor. Who, when finally asked, immediately activated the National Guard to quell the violence and chaos which the Democrat Mayor of Baltimore failed to comprehend, and control. Perhaps what we’re witnessing in Baltimore is the pure definition of insanity — continuing to do the same thing and expect different results.”

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

2010s, Dirty little secret no one wants to admit about Baltimore (2015)

People, Truth, Communication, Sport

“That is why, perhaps, all of us derive Pissarro. He had the good luck to be born in the West Indies, where he learned how to draw without a teacher. He told me all about it. In 1865 he was already cutting out black, bitumen, raw sienna and the ocher's. That's a fact. Never paint with anything but the three primary colours and their derivatives, he used to say me. Yes, he was the first Impressionist.”

Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) French painter

Camille Pissarro was Cézanne's 'teacher' in impressionistic landscape painting; they frequently painted together in open air.
Source: Quotes of Paul Cezanne, after 1900, Cézanne, - a Memoir with Conversations, (1897 - 1906), p. 164, in: 'What he told me – I. The motif'

Learning, Teachers, Drawing, Painting

“On Charley Patton's voice and music style: I heard this fella, and his voice sounded like my voice. I’d always thought, ‘Well, I could never be a singer with this horrible voice’. I hated it. Absolutely hated it. Still do. But he sounded like the same kind of thing. I didn’t know black American terms: a boll weevil or turnpike blues. But there was an emotion that clicked with me. I became fascinated with gospel blues. I still play more gospel than Chicago. I very rarely go anywhere near that speed, aggression, Clapton thing. Someone once reviewed me, saying the testosterone was missing from my blues solos, because I don’t do Chicago. It’s just alien to me.”

Chris Rea (1951) English singer-songwriter

2015

Hate, Music, Speed

“What we hear about eternal inflation or the string landscape, seems somehow unavoidably to lead to some kind of multiverse. However, it seems to me there is a fundamental problem there. Once of course you have the multiverse, then you can start playing around and try to find probability or getting to the anthropic principle, or whatever. But the point is that the picture is essentially a classical one, and it is difficult to see that if you have many universes, coming essentially with an inflationary state, that there would not be plenty of horizons in this. Now the quantum mechanics of horizons is, I think, perfectly not understood. The simplest example is the black hole, where after all nobody knows really if the problem lies in the singularity or if it lies really already in the horizon.”

François Englert (1932) Belgian theoretical physicist

as quoted in: [Gross, David; Henneaux, Marc; Sevrin, Alexander, eds., The Theory of the Quantum World: Proceedings of the 25th Solvay Conference on Physics, Brussels, Belgium 19-22 October 2011, World Scientific, 2013, 309, https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Theory_of_the_Quantum_World.html?id=0o-6CgAAQBAJ&pg=PA309]

Problem, Thinking, Universe

“The first colours which made a strong impression on me were light juice green, white, crimson red, black and yellow ocher. These memories go back to the third year of my life. I saw these colours on various objects [houses and roofs, in Russia] which are not as clear in my mind as the colours themselves.”

Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) Russian painter

Source: 1916 -1920, Autobiography', 1918, p. 9

Life, Light, Strong, Memory

“White southerners saw Lincoln as anti-slavery and his election as a direct threat to the survival of the peculiar institution. Are you going to tell me that they were stupid or deluded? Is that any way for white southerners to honor their ancestors, by ridiculing their intelligence? Indeed, Stephen Douglas' decision to accuse Lincoln of embracing racial equality tells us that playing the race, or racism, card in the 1850s was alive and well, because Douglas believed that he would gain political traction among racist Illinois voters, who were white, after all, by associating Lincoln with the cause of black equality. Lincoln's response was thus also an issue of political survival. So was his decision not to publicize his support for limited black suffrage in Louisiana in 1864. He advanced the idea in a private letter, but waited thirteen months until he made his sentiment public, and three days after he made that sentiment public, he fell victim to an assassin's bullet because that assassin could not bear the thought of black equality. Lincoln knew he lived in a racist America, North and South.”

Brooks D. Simpson (1957) American historian

Brooks D. Simpson. "Race and Slavery, North and South: Some Logical Fallacies" https://cwcrossroads.wordpress.com/2011/01/18/race-and-slavery-north-and-south-some-logical-fallacies/#comment-47560 (18 June 2011), Crossroads, WordPress 2010s

Stupidity, Way, Intelligence, Idea

“It is the small flock of God. "Whoever receives in my name one of those little" said Jesus, "It is myself who receives." What thinks the one that sticks, that maims, or inflicts to their pure souls more black sorrow than death? (…) The curse of a crowd of children, is a cataclysm, a horror prodigy, a chain of dark mountains in the sky, with a cavalcade of thunder and lightning in their tops. It is the infinite of the cries of all deep, is a not know what highly powerful unforgiving and extinguishing any hope of forgiveness.”

Léon Bloy (1846–1917) French writer, poet and essayist

Léon Bloy, Octavio de Faria, portuguese edition, page 101. Léon Bloy, Octavio de Faria, portuguese edition, page 101. https://books.google.com.br/books?id=wI4SAAAAYAAJ&q=%C3%89+o+rebanho+dos+pequenos+de+Deus.+%22Quem+quer+que+receba+em+meu+nome+um+desses+pequenos%22+disse+Jesus&dq=%C3%89+o+rebanho+dos+pequenos+de+Deus.+%22Quem+quer+que+receba+em+meu+nome+um+desses+pequenos%22+disse+Jesus&hl=pt-BR&sa=X&ved=0CBsQ6AEwAGoVChMI0Ovrgrn5yAIVQpGQCh3fFwGB

Death, God, Children, Hope

“I feel like I was particularly impressed by Richard Corben's work. But in general I would not say the underground made that big of an impression except for Corben… His science-fiction stories, those almost primitive black and white comics he did back then. I was very struck by the visceral punch they had, by the unusual artistic point of view. And also by the unabashed exaggeration. It's as if you wanted a woman to have big breasts, you drew it. There was something just so joyously excessive and erotic about his stuff, that I just ate it up.|Frank Miller }}”

Richard Corben (1940) American illustrator

Feeling, Science

“If Black people had simply accepted a status of economic and political inferiority, the mob murders would probably have subsided. But because vast numbers of ex-slaves refused to discard their dreams of progress, more than ten thousand lynchings occurred during the three decades following the war.”

Angela Davis (1944) American political activist, scholar, and author

Women, Race and Class (1983)

War, People, Dreams

“Comparing them by their faculties of memory, reason, and imagination, it appears to me, that in memory they are equal to the whites; in reason much inferior…. The improvement of the blacks in body and mind, in the first instance of their mixture with the whites, has been observed by every one, and proves that their inferiority is not the effect merely of their condition of life. We know that among the Romans, about the Augustan age especially, the condition of their slaves was much more deplorable than that of the blacks on the continent of America…Yet notwithstanding these and other discouraging circumstances among the Romans, their slaves were often their rarest artists. They excelled too in science, insomuch as to be usually employed as tutors to their master’s children. Epictetus, Terence, and Phaedrus, were slaves. But they were of the race of whites. It is not their condition then, but nature, which has produced the distinction.”

Thomas Jefferson book Notes on the State of Virginia

Query XIV
1780s, Notes on the State of Virginia

Life, Children, Age, Imagination

“There is…a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I and others have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed that there was a real promise of hope for the poor, both black and white, through the Poverty Program. There were experiments, hopes, and new beginnings. Then came the build-up in Vietnam. And I watched the program broken as if it was some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war. And I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money, like some demonic, destructive suction tube. And you may not know it, my friends, but it is estimated that we spend $500,000 to kill each enemy soldier, while we spend only fifty-three dollars for each person classified as poor, and much of that fifty-three dollars goes for salaries to people that are not poor. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor, and attack it as such.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam (1967)

Men, Money, War, People

“In the course of history the refugee was the first peaceful immigrant. In a social structure offering no place for a stranger, the unfortunate who had" taken the flight and so evaded death and black fate" at the hands of his enemies was sheltered under the sacred law of hospitality, since he came "as a fugative and a suppliant."”

Eugene M. Kulischer (1881–1956) American sociologist

Kulischer (1949) "Displaced Persons in the Modern World" in: Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. Vol. 262, Reappraising Our Immigration Policy (Mar., 1949), p. 166

Death, Fate, Peace, Law

“If racism is not the main problem for blacks, what is? Liberal antiracism.”

Dinesh D'Souza (1961) Indian-American political commentator, filmmaker, author

Source: Books, The End of Racism (1995), Ch. 1

Problem

“You know, being black doesn’t give you a license to call people racist any more than being Jewish gives you license to call people anti-Semitic.”

Alan M. Dershowitz (1938) American lawyer, author

Fox & Friends Weekend, Aug 6, 2017, responding to Congresswoman Maxine Waters

People

“It's time that glamour came back, everything has got a little bit beige in the last two years, I say bring back black!”

Siobhan Fahey (1958) singer and songwriter in Banarama and Shakespears Sister

G3 interview (2002)

Time

“I bet he drinks Carling Black Label..”

Dennis Skinner (1932) British politician

A reference to an advertising campaign at the time http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/416382.stm BBC 1991 1990s

Drink

“Benjamin Black is a craftsman and these are crafted works. I'm very proud of them. I think they're well made, but Banville is doing something else – he's trying to make a kind of poetry, I suppose. I'm a perfectionist. It's an illness but a good illness. It's a completely different method of writing. Banville writes with a fountain pen on paper in a manuscript book and Black works straight on to the screen. It could take me a whole morning to write a few sentences as Banville, but as Black I'd be very annoyed if I didn't have at least two or three pages done. This drives crime-writers crackers because they think I'm saying that their craft is not worth it. I'm simply saying it's a different thing. I don't know why they worry when I talk about speed; after all, Georges Simenon wrote his books in about 10 days.”

John Banville (1945) Irish writer

John Banville: Who cares whodunnit? (2013)

Books, Thinking, Speed

“Blacks, soldiers, and Jews are a menace to the race.”

Margaret Sanger (1879–1966) American birth control activist, educator and nurse

Unknown source. Often falsely cited as Birth Control Review, April 1933 http://lifedynamics.com/app/uploads/2015/09/1933-04-April.pdf, as in William D. Gairdner, The War Against the Family (1992), p. 464 https://books.google.com/books?id=vZsQ5d_43zEC&pg=PA464. No letters or articles by Sanger appear in that issue. John George, in American Extremists: Militias, Supremacists, Klansmen, Communists & Others (1992), p. 415, describes this quote as "evidently concocted in the late 1980s". Misattributed

“My old landscapes of Pennsylvania are worth so much now that I have to hide them, so I don't get put in an even higher tax bracket. For years nobody would pay a dime for them. They're still the same paintings. They didn't get any better. I treasure them as much as my recent black and white abstracts... My dealer was furious when I showed him my latest works. I'm returning to color. He tells me to ride it out and change when the fashion change. I told him no! I told him I paint each painting from the heart. I have followed my heart all my life.”

Franz Kline (1910–1962) American painter

1959
Quote from a speech of Kline in the jazz club The Five Spot, as quoted in Introduction by David Anram, The Stamp of Impulse, Abstract expressionist prints, David Anram, David Acton, p. 21
1960's

Life, Color, Fashion, Change

“The TNC seems to confuse black people with mercenaries: all blacks are mercenaries. If you do that, which means one-third of the population of Libya, which is black, is also mercenaries. They are killing people, normal workers, you know, mistreating them, invading some embassies like the embassy of Kenya, some embassies in Tripoli.”

Jean Ping (1942) Gabonese politician

African Union Chief Accuses Libyan Rebels of Targeting Black Africans http://www.democracynow.org/2011/8/30/headlines#6

People

“It goes without saying that the police would be unable to set into motion their racist machinery were they not sanctioned and supported by the judicial system. The courts not only consistently abstain from prosecuting criminal behavior on the part of the police, but they convict, on the basis of biased police testimony, countless Black men and women.”

Angela Davis (1944) American political activist, scholar, and author

If They Come in The Morning (1971)

Women, Men, Behavior, Support

“The history of the (Jewish) people is written in black ink, and has included a series of murders of the prophets, the Mujaheedin, and righteous people. Oh Sons of brave Mujaheedin…You have revived the hopes of this nation through your blessed Jihad…The Islamic nation will not spare money or effort in support of your cause, which is the supreme Muslim cause.”

Abdul Rahman Al-Sudais (1962) Imam in Mecca

Imam Sudayyis in a Friday Sermon at Al-Haram Mosque in Mecca: Either Victory or Martyrdom http://www.memritv.org/Transcript.asp?P1=26 April 2004.

Money, People, Hope, History

“Europe and Africa are already here, and the Indian was here before either. He stands today between the two extremes of black and white, too proud to claim fraternity with either, and yet too weak to withstand the power of either. Heretofore, the policy of our government has been governed by race pride, rather than by wisdom. Until recently, neither the Indian nor the negro has been treated as a part of the body politic. No attempt has been made to inspire either with a sentiment of patriotism, but the hearts of both races have been diligently sown with the dangerous seeds of discontent and hatred.”

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

1860s, Our Composite Nationality (1869)

Wisdom, Heart, Parting

“Like so much of cool hunting, Hilfiger's marketing journey feeds off the alienation at the heart of America's race relations: selling white youth on their fetishization of black style, and black youth on their fetishization of white wealth.”

Naomi Klein (1970) Canadian author and activist

Source: No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies 1999, Chapter Five: "The Patriarchy Gets Funky"

Youth, Heart, Wealth

“.. these reproductions were in Zwemmer's bookshop [in the 1920's]. I can see them now. They were black. There was one on Negro sculpture, one on Mexican sculpture, one on an Egyptian sculpture, and so on. And all these I knew. And in one of them was this small reproduction of the Chac Mool [famous Toltec-Maya sculpture]. It was the pose that struck me – this idea of a figure being on its back and turned upwards to the sky instead of lying on its side, which is a different sort of idea from the Renaissance, or Greek reclining figure, which is usually on its side. And this gave me all sorts of chances of making variations on it.”

Henry Moore (1898–1986) English artist

Quote from The Donald Caroll interviews, Talmy Franklin, London 1973, p. 377
1970 and later

Lying, Idea, Chance

“The proposition to make soldiers of our slaves is the most pernicious idea that has been suggested since the war began. It is to me a source of deep mortification and regret to see the name of that good and great man and soldier, General R. E. Lee, given as authority for such a policy. My first hour of despondency will be the one in which that policy shall be adopted. You cannot make soldiers of slaves, nor slaves of soldiers. The moment you resort to negro soldiers your white soldiers will be lost to you; and one secret of the favor with which the proposition is received in portions of the army is the hope that when negroes go into the Army they will be permitted to retire. It is simply a proposition to fight the balance of the war with negro troops. You can't keep white and black troops together, and you can't trust negroes by themselves. It is difficult to get negroes enough for the purpose indicated in the President's message, much less enough for an Army. Use all the negroes you can get, for all the purposes for which you need them, but don't arm them. The day you make soldiers of them is the beginning of the end of the revolution.”

Howell Cobb (1815–1868) American politician

Howell Cobb. "Letter to James A. Seddon", in: Encyclopædia Britannica] (1911), Hugh Chisholm, editor, 11th ed., Cambridge University Press.

War, Secret, Hope, Idea

“Half the campus was designed by Bottom the Weaver, half by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe; Benton had been endowed with one to begin with, and had smiled and sweated and and spoken for the other. A visitor looked under black beams, through leaded casements (past apple boughs, past box, past chairs like bath-tubs on broomsticks) to a lawn ornamented with one of the statues of David Smith; in the months since the figure had been put in its place a shrike had deserted for it a neighboring thorn tree, and an archer had skinned her leg against its farthest spike. On the table in the President’s waiting-room there were copies of Town and Country, the Journal of the History of Ideas, and a small magazine—a little magazine—that had no name. One walked by a mahogany hat-rack, glanced at the coat of arms on an umbrella-stand, and brushed with one’s sleeve something that gave a ghostly tinkle—four or five black and orange ellipsoids, set on grey wires, trembled in the faint breeze of the air-conditioning unit: a mobile. A cloud passed over the sun, and there came trailing from the gymnasium, in maillots and blue jeans, a melancholy procession, four dancers helping to the infirmary a friend who had dislocated her shoulder in the final variation of The Eye of Anguish.”

Randall Jarrell book Pictures from an Institution

Source: Pictures from an Institution (1954) [novel], Chapter 1: “The President, Mrs., and Derek Robbins”, p. 3; opening paragraph of novel

Smile, History, Idea, Tree

“Gentleman, I am a republican, a radical republican, a Black republican, a republican dyed in the wool, and for one I want the republican party to live as long as I do… It is the party of law and order, of liberty and progress, of honor and honesty, as against disloyalty, moral stagnation, dishonest voting, and repudiation.”

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

Speech: “I Speak to You as an American Citizen” speech, Oct. 1, 1870, Douglas Papers, ser. I, 4:275
1870s

Law

“In the interests of our people, and of other people in this part of the world, let's work together. Why do we have to exclude people because of their colour, whether they are white, brown, yellow or black? Let's accept that we are all a part of Africa, all part of the world. Let's all work together. And the more we can get people to accept that philosophy, the greater the hope for the whole world.”

Ian Smith (1919–2007) Prime Minister of Rhodesia

Ian Smith - A Bit Of A Rebel, Ian Smith

People, World, Hope, Parting

“Religion is not black and white. It's much more complicated. Spirituality is much bigger than that. God is much bigger than that. I don't believe in a wrathful God. I believe he's much more forgiving and inclusive than some religions. The things that are done in her name or his name are horrible.”

Susan Sarandon (1946) American actress

"'The Power of One' : Interview with Susan Sarandon" at Belief.net
Quote

God, Religion, Forgiveness

“The truth is that what really needs fixing is something only a few, like President Obama, are willing to speak about, perhaps because it is so daunting a task. Through the “My Brother’s Keeper” initiative, the President is addressing the disproportionate challenges faced by young men of color. For instance, data shows that the percentage of young men not working or not enrolled in school is nearly twice as high for blacks as it is for whites. This initiative, and others like it, is about doing the hard work to grow drug-resistant and violence-resistant kids, especially in communities of color, so they never become part of that officer’s life experience.”

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

2010s, Hard Truths: Law Enforcement (2015)

Life, Men, Truth, School

“He is considered to have a strong bond with the Juventus fans, once stating; "I'm proud to be a Juventino, to be a "bandiera", like you define me to be often, in reality I'm just a small part of a big black & white "bandiera" (flag) that grows with the years and if you look closely your name is part of it… To continue making this "bandiera" grow we need everybody: let's stay united."”

Alessandro Del Piero (1974) Italian former professional footballer

Juventus.com http://www.juventus.com/uk/news/detail.aspx?lml_language_id=0&trs_id=1370000&ID=7885 Attributed

Reality, Strong, Parting

“Mindplayers didn't really address a lot about the criminal element of this particular world. Everybody in the Mindplayers world couldn't possibly live like the few people that you saw. A lot of times, a culture almost seems to float on top of its own black market, and things from that filter up through the culture. I get the feeling that this law-abiding peaceful thing that I live in now is almost never-never land - to a certain extent it's not even really real. I spent a decade working for Hallmark cards, which is supposed to epitomise sweetness and light and good living and ethics and morals. But Hallmark, like many American manufacturers, has a lot of things like toys and ornaments manufactured in the Far East, by people in sweat-shops. These are children, old people, poor people, people who don't have enough to eat; we get these things so cheaply because we simply use these people and throw them away. This is what I mean about our culture, our never-never land, floating on top of our underworld.”

Pat Cadigan (1953) science fiction author

Cadigan (1993) in: " Interview with Pat Cadigan, May 1993 http://tamaranth.blogspot.nl/1993/05/interview-pat-cadigan-may-1993.html" in The Hardcore, 1993

Children, People, World, Peace

“I can see the black spots of the sun [remark to Sonia Delaunay, his wife and female artist].”

Robert Delaunay (1885–1941) French painter

Quote from 'Nous irons jusqu'au soleil', Delaunay; as cited in: 'Futurism', ed. By Didier Ottinger; Centre Pompidou / 5 Continents Editions, Milan, 2008, p. 214
1915 - 1941

Sun

“Temporaryism has been the Black Plague and the Jesus of our age.”

Brandon Boyd (1976) American rock singer, writer and visual artist

Lyrics, Morning View (2001)

Age

“You know what I just realized? Jack Black… Jack White! [points to Jack White]”

Jack Black (1969) American actor, comedian, musician, music producer

“It is hard to understand how this infinitely dense singularity can evaporate into nothing. For matter inside the black hole leak out into the universe requires that it travel faster than the speed of light.”

John Moffat book Reinventing Gravity

Source: Reinventing Gravity (2008), Chapter 5, Conventional Black Holes, p. 85

Travel, Understanding, Light, Universe

“The reason liberals despise Clarence Thomas or caricature a Ben Carson, more so than they do white conservative justices or public figures, is the threat that they pose to the entire engine of liberal condescension — and Democratic politics. When successful blacks prove that they easily compete in the marketplace of talent and ideas without liberal racial policies and their political henchmen, then the entire architecture of liberal racial politics collapses. The disdain shown a Thomas or Carson suggests that liberal racial politics serve as private medieval penance in the abstract, and at little personal cost for assuaging guilt over liberal apartheid.”

Victor Davis Hanson (1953) American military historian, essayist, university professor

2010s, "Black Lives Matter"—a Year From Now (2015)

Justice, Idea, Success, Personality

“Its history is soaked in blood of the supposed enemies of Islam. But all this is denied by Marxists who always try to cover up the black spots of Muslim rule with thick coats of whitewash.”

K. S. Lal book The Legacy of Muslim Rule in India

Source: The Legacy of Muslim Rule in India (1992), Chapter 3

History

“Ethiopians say that their gods are snubnosed and black
Thracians that they are pale and red-haired.”

Xenophanes (-570–-475 BC) Presocratic philosopher

Fragment 16 (D-K)

God

“They calls me yellow like yellow be my name. They calls me yellow like yellow be my name. But if yellow is a name Why aint black the same. Well, if I say Hey black girl Lord, she try to ruin my game.”

Alice Walker book The Color Purple

The Color Purple (1982)

Girl, Game

“As queen, Farah achieved almost immediate popularity. She had several features that pleased the Iranians: she was 'fully Iranian' and also worthy of honour because she descended from the family of the Prophet. She was a brunette with deep black eyes of the kind most Persians cherish. (The Shah's outlandish taste for blondes was not shared by his compatriots.) Farah appeared to be slightly taller than the Shah, but this could not be held against her. The new queen's athletic physique and her well-publicised love of sports disconcerted some religious circles, but even the more conservative Iranians now understood that times were changing.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

The Unknown Life of the Shah (1991)

Love, Family, Sport, Appearance

“If the Church, white or black, is to express the true philosophy of Jesus Christ, Himself a worker, it will not lend itself to the creed of oppressive capitalism which would deny to the servant his just hire.”

A. Philip Randolph (1889–1979) African-American civil-rights movement leader

"Negro Labor and the Church," in Capitalism vs. Collectivism: The Colonial Era to 1945, Volume 3 of African American Political Thought (Routledge African Studies: 2003), p. 136

Christ

“But now he sleeps endlessly.
Now the moss and the grass
open with sure fingers
the flower of his skull.
And now his blood comes out singing;
singing along marshes and meadows,
slides on frozen horns,
faltering souls in the mist
stumbling over a thousand hoofs
like a long, dark, sad tongue,
to form a pool of agony
close to the starry Guadalquivir.
Oh, white wall of Spain!
Oh, black bull of sorrow!
Oh, hard blood of Ignacio!
Oh, nightingale of his veins!”

Federico García Lorca Llanto por Ignacio Sánchez Mejías

Pero ya duerme sin fin.
Ya los musgos y la hierba
abren con dedos seguros
la flor de su calavera.
Y su sangre ya viene cantando:
cantando por marismas y praderas,
resbalando por cuernos ateridos,
vacilando sin alma por la niebla,
tropezando con miles de pezuñas
como una larga, oscura, triste lengua,
para formar un charco de agonía
junto al Guadalquivir de las estrellas.
¡Oh blanco muro de España!
¡Oh negro toro de pena!
¡Oh sangre dura de Ignacio!
¡Oh ruiseñor de sus venas!
Llanto por Ignacio Sanchez Mejias (1935)

Sadness, Soul, Flowers, Sleep

“And they might even have a black president but he’s useless, Cause he does not control the economy stupid”

Immortal Technique (1978) American rapper and activist

The 3rd World
Albums, The 3rd World (2008)

Stupidity

“I am a Black revolutionary, and, as such, i am a victim of all the wrath, hatred, and slander that amerika is capable of. Like all other Black revolutionaries, amerika is trying to lynch me.”

Assata Shakur (1947) American activist who was a member of the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army

To My People (July 4, 1973)

“One cannot play chess if one becomes aware of the pieces as living souls and of the fact that the Whites and the Blacks have more in common with each other than with the players. Suddenly one loses all interest in who will be champion.”

Anatol Rapoport (1911–2007) Russian-born American mathematical psychologist

Anatol Rapoport, Strategy and Conscience. Harper & Row, 1964. p. 195
1960s

Soul

“I was watching the news reports from Baltimore and hearing all the condemnations from some about being kept down and the lack of jobs, opportunity, good schools — then why do these blacks keep voting for the same people? And this isn't a phenomenon isolated to Baltimore. Every single major urban center in America is run by Democrats — more specifically, liberal progressives, black or white. The morass that became Detroit. The killing fields of Chicago. The depravity of Washington, D. C. The shame of South Dallas. And yes, even the place that was once my home, Atlanta, even with all the successful black entertainers. Now, I remember the first black mayor of Atlanta, Maynard Jackson. That guy was a leader and even spoke at my high school Baccalaureate. But today, Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed has done such a bang-up job that the Atlanta Braves are moving to Cobb County! Just do the assessment yourselves, who are the elected officials heading up the urban centers? And where does one find the most dire socio-economic statistics?”

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

2010s, Dirty little secret no one wants to admit about Baltimore (2015)

People, School, Guy, Home

“The purpose of the University of Washington cannot be to produce black lawyers for blacks, Polish lawyers for Poles, Jewish lawyers for Jews, Irish lawyers for Irish. It should be to produce good lawyers for Americans and not to place First Amendment barriers against anyone.”

William O. Douglas (1898–1980) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Dissenting, DeFunis v. Odegaard, 416 U.S. 342 (1974)
Judicial opinions

Universe

“I now receive inquiries of interest for deanships and departmental chairs several times a year. I find myself on committees where I am the only woman and there is one black man. We two tokens greet each other wryly. I am frequently invited to lecture at architecture schools, ‘to be a role model for our girls.’ I am happy to do this for their young women but I would rather be asked purely because my work is interesting.”

Denise Scott Brown (1931) American architect

"Sexism and the star system in architecture"

Women, Happiness, School, Girl

“I was traveling in Greece as a teenager, and for those who haven't been to Greece, it's absolutely covered in olive groves — stunted, gnarly little bonsai-type trees. And I was driving on a moped and a huge black stallion had pulled away from its stake and was just going nuts in this tiny, tiny, hobbit-like forest. It was just such a powerful image, this enormous beast let loose and going wild in a fairy-tale wood of tiny trees… The song itself is really about going through the process of making the first album. It was a very strange experience and a very steep learning curve. For the previous 10 or 15 years, I'd been completely my own boss — when you play a gig, you just play your new song, the new song is always your favorite. And here I was having to make an album of stuff that's never gonna go away. I was being asked to make these huge decisions, so really the song is just about learning to listen to your guts again. There's actually very few times in our lives now when we have to do that.”

KT Tunstall (1975) Scottish singer-songwriter and guitarist

On influences in writing her song "Black Horse and the Cherry Tree", in a Barnes & Noble Interview with David Sprague (February 2006).

Travel, Decision, Tree, Learning

“It's not very fashionable nowadays to have a philosophy that demands a lot of life. I tend to be drawn to people who are emotional - now they'd be called 'crazy'. Pollock, Jasper Johns, Toulouse-Lautrec. People said, 'They're off their nut!' Was Faulkner off his nut because he stayed in his house for eight months at a time writing books, and then you'd find him drunk up in a tree, making out with some old black woman? I think that's fuckin' great!”

Ryan Adams (1974) American alt-country/rock singer-songwriter

Blender (August/September 2001)

Life, People, Books, Fashion

“To all the young women here tonight, and all across the country, let me say those words again: Black girls rock! We rock! We rock! No matter who you are, no matter where you come from, you are beautiful, you are powerful, you are brilliant, you are funny! Let me tell you, I'm so proud of you. My husband, your president, is so proud of you. And we have such big hopes and dreams for every single one of you.”

Michelle Obama (1964) lawyer, writer, wife of Barack Obama and former First Lady of the United States

Speech at BET's 2015 Black Girls Rock! event (28 March 2015) http://uk.eonline.com/news/640752/michelle-obama-offers-inspirational-words-at-2015-black-girls-rock-find-out-what-she-said 2010s

Women, Beauty, Dreams, Hope

“The Bell curve is a fact of life. The blacks on average score 85 per cent on IQ and it is accurate, nothing to do with culture. The whites score on average 100. Asians score more … the Bell curve authors put it at least 10 points higher. These are realities that, if you do not accept, will lead to frustration because you will be spending money on wrong assumptions and the results cannot follow.”

Lee Kuan Yew (1923–2015) First Prime Minister of Singapore

Lee Kuan Yew, The Man & His Ideas, 1997
1990s

Life, Money, Reality

“The coolest thing for me is the experience of floating and not feeling my weight. And hanging by a window just after sunset and watching the stars in the big black dome of the sky as the earth moves underneath.”

Kalpana Chawla (1962–2003) American astronaut

Asian Week Feb. 7 - Feb 13, 2003 http://asianweek.com/2003_02_07/opinion_emil.html

Feeling, Star

“What kind of a society is this where a person can’t express attraction without fearing that they’re going to be murdered for it? If the person who came out with the secret was a Jewish woman or a black woman or an Asian woman, and he went over to her house the next day and killed her because he was so repulsed and she had embarrassed him that way on national television, nobody would be writing stories on the TV show’s responsibility. Everyone would be writing stories about this racist, this anti-Semite.”

Jeffrey Montgomery (1953–2016) American LGBT rights activist and public relations executive

The New York Times, 1995 [Remembering Jeff Montgomery, LGBTQ rights advocate, Ennis, Dawn, LGBTQ Nation, July 19, 2016, 2016-07-19, http://www.lgbtqnation.com/2016/07/remembering-jeff-montgomery-lgbtq-rights-advocate/]

Secret, Fear, Way, Housing

“Well, we have a major crisis because Welfarism is failing. The Christian community must begin to reestablish Christian charity. I think every church could begin as a number of black churches have done, with the people in their area or their own members relatives, friends, who are in desperate need. If every church in this country, it has been said by a statistician, could take care of three families the problem would disappear. Well, there are big churches that could take care of more than three families. And those that can take care of only one or half a family, those churches could come together and accomplish a great deal.”

Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001) American theologian

Audio lectures, Christian Charity vs Welfarism (September 4, 1996)

People, Family, Communication, Problem

“After the first powerful plain manifesto
The black statement of pistons, without more fuss
But gliding like a queen, she leaves the station.”

Stephen Spender (1909–1995) English poet and man of letters

"The Express" (l. 1–3) in Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry (1988) edited by Richard Ellmann and Robert O’Clair

“Just when things look darkest, they go black.”

Paul Newman (1925–2008) American actor and film director

Quoted in "The New Book of Magical Names" - Page 100 - by Phoenix McFarland - 2003

“Cargo. They were cargo. I think it started the day I first saw the Totenlager in Treblinka. I remember Wirth standing there, next to the pits full of blue-black corpses. It had nothing to do with humanity-it couldn't have; it was a mass-a mass of rotting flesh. Wirth said, 'What shall we do with this garbage?”

Franz Stangl (1908–1971) Austrian-born SS officer, commandant at first Sobibór extermination camp and then Treblinka extermination c…

I think unconsciously that started me thinking of them as cargo.
About the victims. Quoted in "Good and Evil After Auschwitz: Ethical Implications for Today" - Page 96 - by Jack Bemporad, John Pawlikowski, Joseph Sievers - History - 2000.

Thinking

“Recently I dreamed of you [of the artist Herman van der Weele and his wife] and that you two were very rich and lived in a beautiful place and that I sat in your room with you and Herman, with beautiful fabrics and wallpapers that I couldn't stop looking to them and you wore black glasses, just like me now [to protect his eyes], but they [black glasses] were so amazingly beautiful and they suited you so well, as is only possible in a dream, and your dress was beautifully deep red blue black with exotic figures woven into it and the walls were yellow and pink. Anyway it was all a miracle of beauty and I wished that.... my eyes were healthy again and that we each could spent hundred thousand guilders a week, then we had built a beautiful yacht and we all sailed to the country of the Mikado [Japan], to have a look there.”

George Hendrik Breitner (1857–1923) Dutch painter and photographer

translation from the original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek
version in original Dutch / citaat uit de brief van Breitner, in het Nederlands: Laatst heb ik van jelui [de kunstenaar Herman van der Weele en zijn vrouw] gedroomd en dat jelui heel rijk waren en prachtig woonden en dat ik met U en Herman in een vertrek daarvan zat, met zulke prachtige stoffen en behangen, dat ik mij niet kan verzadigen er naar te kijken en gij hadt een zwarte bril op net als ik nu, maar die was zo verbazend mooi en stond U zoo goed, als dat alleen maar in een droom mogelijk is en uw costuum was prachtig diep rood blauw zwart met exotische figuren daarin geweven en de wanden waren geel en rose, enfin het was een wonder van pracht en ik wou dat.. ..mijn oogen weer heel waren en dat we ieder honderdduizend gld in de week te verteren hadden, dan lieten we een mooi jacht bouwen en zeilden allemaal naar het land van den Mikado, om daar eens te kijken.
Quote of Breitner, in a letter to Herman van der Weele, c. 1892-96; as cited in Meisjes in kimono. Schilderijen, tekeningen en foto's van George Hendrik Breitner (1857-1923) en zijn Japanse tijdgenoten, J.H.G. Bergsma & H. Shimoyama; Hotei Publishing, Leiden 2001, pp. 15-16
1890 - 1900

Beauty, Dreams, Country

“Black men, Indian men, and gay men have all have something in common: They do not provide an economic security blanket for women.”

Warren Farrell book The Myth of Male Power

Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part II: The Glass Cellars of the disposable sex, p. 206.

Women, Men

“Now it's time to play a brand new game called Name That Barcode. Here's the first one: "Thick black, thin white, thick black, thick white, thick black, thin white."”

Humphrey Lyttelton (1921–2008) English jazz trumpeter

OK who's going to identify that?
The Guardian, Saturday 26 April 2008

Game, Time

“Clouds that are grey
Can no longer be washed clean.
We open the umbrella
And simply paint the sky black.”

Gu Cheng (1956–1993) Chinese poet

"A Walk In The Rain" [Yu xing]

Painting

“It is the state that is robbing all classes, rich and poor, black and white alike; it is the state that is ripping us all off; it is the state that is the common enemy of mankind.”

Murray N. Rothbard (1926–1995) American economist of the Austrian School, libertarian political theorist, and historian

Murray Rothbard, “The Noblest Cause of All,” Address to the Libertarian Party Convention (1977), Lewrockwell.com https://www.lewrockwell.com/1970/01/murray-n-rothbard/the-noblest-cause-of-all/

“.. Besides of all things I hated and detested was painting. They told me I had a talent for it, and was a clever chap and could make as much money as I liked. Money always the principal thing and so it happens that I got forced into it. Being considered a very clever talented chap, after the war or siege of Paris [1870-71], a young fellow of the name of Vincent van Gogh [not painting yet, but still art-seller at Goupil in Paris] came around asking me for advice... The law of the pocket: 'full' signifies 'rich'; empty 'poor', all the world over the same; black, brown, yellow or white skinned. Heathen, barbarians, Mahommetans; pocket full, 'power”

Matthijs Maris (1839–1917) Dutch painter

empty, 'helpless'. in a letter to David Croal Thomson (1907), as cited in: The Brothers Maris (James – Matthew – William), ed. Charles Holme; text: D.C. Thomson https://ia800204.us.archive.org/1/items/cu31924016812756/cu31924016812756.pdf; publishers, Offices of 'The Studio', London - Paris, 1907, p. BMxxxviii

Money, Hate, War, World

“Republicans bring out Colin Powell and J. C. Watts because they have no program, no policy. The play that game because they have no other game. They have no love and no joy. They'd rather take pictures with black children than feed them.”

Donna Brazile (1959) American author, educator, and political activist and strategist

As quoted in "Gore Aide Dealt From Bottom of Race Deck, Powell Says" http://www.highbeam.com/Search?searchTerm=%22Republicans+bring+out+Colin+Powell%22 (7 January 2000), by Ceci Connolly, The Washington Post

Love, Children, Game, Joy

“From New Orleans and the back roads of the Mississippi Delta to Harlem and Chicago, black musicians set enduring and distinctive standards for American creativity. The blues of Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith, the gospel of Mahalia Jackson, the jazz of Duke Ellington, and the soul of Marvin Gaye claim fans of all ages from around the world. The trumpeting genius of Louis Armstrong and Dizzy Gillespie illustrate the exceptional musicianship so prominent in various genres of African-American music.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2001, Black Music (June 2001)

Age, World, Music, Soul

“The Left's experiment in training Americans to be passive and expect the government to do absolutely everything for them has been overwhelmingly successful in creating an infantile mindset, with the result being that in New Orleans and entire segment of the population, mostly black - the Left's guinea pigs in this endeavor — apparently no longer have the requisite brains and common sense to get out of the way of a Category 5 hurricane.”

Mark Williams American conservative activist, radio talk show host and author

On Hurricane Katrina (9 September 2005 CNN HN)

Way, Sense, Success, Training

“Chris Matthews: Let me ask you this: I once went to Laundromat when I was at a Peace Corps training in Baker, Louisiana. A Laundromat had this sign on in glaze: "Whites only on the Laundromat", just to use the Laundromat machines. This was a local shop saying no blacks allowed. You say that should be legal?
Ron Paul: That's — that's ancient history. That's ancient history. That's over and done with.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Hardball
MSNBC
2011-05-03, quoted in * Ron Paul on Hardball
Newbusters.org
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2011/05/14/ron-paul-accuses-chris-matthews-making-him-look-racist-bringing-civil
2011

Peace, History, Training

“And the old homelovingness/of light falling and touching the black/utensils …”

Amit Chaudhuri (1962) contemporary Indian-English novelist

Kitchen
St Cyril Road and Other Poems (2005)

Light

“The mad road, lonely, leading around the bend into the openings of space towards the horizon Wasatch snows promised us in the vision of the West, spine heights at the world's end, coast of blue Pacific starry night — nobone halfbanana moons sloping in the tangled night sky, the torments of great formations in mist, the huddled invisible insect in the car racing onwards, illuminate. — The raw cut, the drag, the butte, the star, the draw, the sunflower in the grass — orangebutted west lands of Arcadia, forlorn sands of the isolate earth, dewy exposures to infinity in black space, home of the rattlesnake and the gopher the level of the world, low and flat: the charging restless mute unvoiced road keening in a seizure of tarpaulin power into the route.”

Jack Kerouac book Visions of Cody

Visions of Cody (1960)

World, Cars, Home, Star

“To give without sympathy is to build a temple without the idol and is as futile as painting a picture with black ink on a black-board.”

Chinmayananda Saraswati (1916–1993) Indian spiritual teacher

Quotations from Gurudev’s teachings, Chinmya Mission Chicago

Painting

“Since the white man says he came from the evolution of animals, well, maybe the black man didn't. The white man has made so many errors in the handling of people that maybe he did come from a gorilla or a fish and crawl up on the sand and then into the trees. Of course, evolution doesn't take God into consideration. I don't think people learned to do all the things they do through evolution.”

Charles Mingus (1922–1979) American jazz double bassist, composer and bandleader

As quoted in More Than A Fakebook : The Music Of Charles Mingus (1991) by Andrew Homzy

God, People, Error, Thinking

“Asphyxiate all your pain away
Don't try to win; it will only end in disgrace
Translucetize the cold light of day
It's glorious, its terrible, God I need it
It's beautiful, it's ravenous; I'll just feed it
Coil down to your black dark decay
And I will dig my own grave now
I'm miss begotten
I am the last one you save here
It's all gone rotten”

Courtney Love (1964) American punk singer-songwriter, musician, actress, and artist

"Nobody's Daughter"
Song lyrics, Nobody's Daughter (2010)

God, Pain, Beauty, Light

“They tried to make me go to Rehab
I said no, no, no
Yes, I've been black, but when I come back
You'll know, know, know!
I ain’t got the time,
And if my daddy thinks I'm fine
Just try to make me go to rehab
I won't go, go, go.”

Amy Winehouse (1983–2011) English singer and songwriter

Rehab
Song lyrics, Back To Black (2006)

Thinking, Time

“The average black household earned one-sixth as much as the average white household in 2000, down from one-quarter in 1995.”

Patrick Bond (1961) American academic

Source: South Africa and Global Apartheid: Continental and International Policies (2003), p. 8

“"In this country in fifteen or twenty years' time the black man will have the whip hand over the white man." I can already hear the chorus of execration. How dare I say such a horrible thing? How dare I stir up trouble and inflame feelings by repeating such a conversation? The answer is that I do not have the right not to do so.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

the first sentence was Powell's own quotation from one of his constituents.
The 'Rivers of Blood' speech

Feeling, Time, Country

“It becoming ever more clear that the combination of racial gaps in IQ and the IQ taboo acts as a black hole that sucks all the intelligence out of an institution. Racial gaps in achievement are the overwhelmingly dominant fact driving school performance, for instance, but nobody is allowed to mention the IQ gap among the races, so misbegotten nonsense rushes in.”

Steve Sailer (1958) American journalist and movie critic

Why Do We Keep Writing About Intelligence? An IQ FAQ http://www.vdare.com/articles/why-do-we-keep-writing-about-intelligence-an-iq-faq, VDARE, December 3, 2007

School, Intelligence

“Yesterday it was divinely beautiful [at Scheveningen beach]. These barges lay in dense rows against the slope [of the beach], and between them one walked as between a fancy-built city and from above between all those tarred hulls coal-black, gray, green and white, a deep blue sky.”

George Hendrik Breitner (1857–1923) Dutch painter and photographer

translation from the original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek
version in original Dutch (citaat van Breitner's brief, in het Nederlands:) Gisteren was 't er [op het strand van Scheveningen] goddelijk mooi. Die schuiten lagen in dichte rijen tegen de [strand]-helling en daartussen ging men als tussen een fantastisch gebouwde stad en van boven tussen die geteerde rompen koolzwart, grijs, groen, [en] wit een diepe blauwe lucht.
In Breitner's letter to A.P. van Stolk, nr. 49, Den Haag 17 Dec. 1883; in the RKD-Archive, The Hague; as cited in the master-thesis Van Gogh en Breitner in Den Haag, Helewise Berger, University of Utrecht, The Netherlands, p. 31
In 1881 already Breitner had rendered the surroundings of Scheveningen in the large 'Panorama of Mesdag', assisting Mesdag in this huge project
before 1890

Beauty

“Then the big white whale, Clinton. What about someone who is a war criminal, a taker of bribes from foreign dictatorships, almost certainly a rapist (plausibly accused, anyway, by three believable women, of rape), executed a black man (Ricky Ray Rector) who was so mentally retarded that he was unable to plead or to understand the charges — You're against all that, right? But you're for it when it's someone who you think is a "New Democrat."”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

"Conversations with History: A Dissenting Voice" http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/Elberg/Hitchens/hitchens-con4.html, interview by Harry Kreisler (2002-04-25). 2000s, 2002

Women, War, Understanding, Thinking

“I'm drinking Jack and I started blacking out. You ever black out? Or as I call it, time travel? You ever do that? Oh yeah! You know how it is -- you're drinking, you black out. You wake up, you're in another bar. You're drinking, you black out. You wake up, you're playing that knife game with a half-Indian somewhere in North Dakota, "Yeah! Yeah! Winner fixes the tranny! Yeah". You're drinking, you black out. You wake up, you're in White Castle -- working there 3 years, STILL not assistant manager. Your buddies tell you to quit, but you can't 'cause you're banging the slow girl on the fry-o-later. They say she's a little retarded, but those titties ain't retarded!”

Dave Attell (1965) comedian

Comedy Central Presents: Dave Attell

Travel, Girl, Game, Drink

“Listen to me, skull!
Under your thin brittle boneplates
what black memories haunt you?
What do you want? What do you dream of? …
Is it your soul you think of,
flickering through frightful nights? …
Skull, I must have been raving mad
to smash you with my bare fist.
Scarlet blood thickens on my fingers,
plagues me to spew these rhymes, and still
my teeth want to tear you to pieces!
Like a raven I'll swallow even the sucked-out bones
to get a fresh taste of the past,
a drop from the torrent of months and years.”

Chế Lan Viên (1920–1989) Vietnamese writer

"Skull", in A Thousand Years of Vietnamese Poetry, ed. Nguyễn Ngọc Bích (Alfred A. Knopf, 1975), ISBN 978-0394494722, p. 166 Original in Vietnamese https://www.asymptotejournal.com/poetry/che-lan-vien-to-a-skull/vietnamese/, and an English translation by Hai-Dang Phan https://www.asymptotejournal.com/poetry/che-lan-vien-to-a-skull/, available at Asymptote.

Dreams, Soul, Thinking, Tear

“That hour, o' night's black arch the keystane.”

Robert Burns Tam o' Shanter

Source: Tam o' Shanter (1790), Line 69

Night

“With fortunate misfortune, kindly wrath,
Heaven's light lash now punishes your black
and foolish sin, and makes of your soul's weal
yourself the minister.”

Torquato Tasso (1544–1595) Italian poet

Seconda avversità, pietoso sdegno
Con leve sferza di lassù flagella
Tua folle colpa; e fa di tua salute
Te medesmo ministro.
Canto XII, stanza 87 (tr. Wickert)
Gerusalemme Liberata (1581)

Soul, Light

“Order was only restored in L. A. when it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks three days after rioting began. The "poor" lined up at the post office to get their handouts (since there were no deliveries)--and then complained about slow service.
What if the checks had never arrived? No doubt the blacks would have fully privatized the welfare state through continued looting. But they were paid off and the violence subsided.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

1992-06-15
Ron Paul Political Report
6
6
6-7
http://www.tnr.com/sites/default/files/PR_June92_p6.pdf, quoted in * 2012-01-03
Andy
Kroll
10 Extreme Claims in Ron Paul's Controversial Newsletters
Mother Jones
0362-8841
http://motherjones.com/politics/2012/01/ron-paul-newsletter-iowa-caucus-republican?page=2 and * 2011-12-23
TNR Exclusive: A Collection of Ron Paul's Most Incendiary Newsletters
New Republic
http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/98883/ron-paul-incendiary-newsletters-exclusive
regarding the Watts Riots
Disputed, Newsletters, Ron Paul Political Report

Time

“When South Africa was governed by a racist white minority, it was scorned by the West and treated as Saddam Hussein was, with boycotts and sanctions. Now that a racist, black-majority government controls the country; that it is as violent as Iraq, Liberia, or the Congo and rapidly becoming another Islamist-friendly, failed African state, it is the toast of the West.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

Into the Cannibal's Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa
2010s, Into the Cannibal's Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa (2011)

Country

“The death of Black Jade coincided with the wedding hour of Pao-yu and Precious Virtue. Shortly after Snow Duck was taken to the wedding chambers, Black Jade had regained consciousness. During this lucid moment, which was not unlike the afterglow of the setting sun, she took Purple Cuckoo's hand and said to her with an effort, "My hour is here. You have served me for many years, and I had hoped that we should be together the rest of our lives… but I am afraid…"
The effort exhausted her and she fell back, panting. She still held Purple Cuckoo's hand and continued after a while, "Mei-mei, I have only one wish. I have no attachment here. After my death, tell them to send my body back to the south––"
She stopped again, and her eyes closed slowly. Purple Cuckoo felt her mistress' hand tighten over hers. Knowing this was a sign of the approaching end, she sent for Li Huan, who had gone back to her own apartment for a brief rest. When the latter returned with Quest Spring, Black Jade's hands were already cold and her eyes dull. They suppressed their sobs and hastened to dress her. Suddenly Black Jade cried, "Pao-yu, Pao-yu, how––" Those were her last words.
Above their own lamentations, Li Huan, Purple Cuckoo, and Quest Spring thought they heard the soft notes of an ethereal music in the sky. They went out to see what it was, but all they could hear was the rustling of the wind through the bamboos and all they could see was the shadow of the moon creeping down the western wall.”

Wang Chi-chen (1899–2001)

Source: Dream of the Red Chamber (1958), p. 307

Death, Hope, Music, Spring

“Within a decade, maybe two or three, Christians will come around to treating gays no differently than they now treat other groups whom they previously persecuted — women, Jews, blacks — but not because of some new interpretation of a biblical passage, or because of a new revelation from God. These changes will come about the same way that they always do: by the oppressed minority fighting for the right to be treated equally, and by a few enlightened members of the oppressing majority supporting their cause. Then what will happen is that Christians will take credit for the civil liberation of gays, dig through the historical record and find a few Christian bloggers or preachers who had the courage and the character to stand up for Gay rights when their fellow Christians would not, and then cite those as evidence that were it not for Christianity gays would not be equal.”

Michael Shermer (1954) American science writer

Shermer (2007), Is Christianity Good for the World? http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/07-10-24.html

Women, God, Way, Courage

“From such a face and form as mine, the noblest sentiments sound like the black utterances of a depraved imagination!
It's human nature! I'm resigned.”

W. S. Gilbert (1836–1911) English librettist of the Gilbert & Sullivan duo

H.M.S. Pinafore (1878)

Imagination, Nature

“Political repression in the United States has reached monstrous proportions. Black and Brown peoples especially, victims of the most vicious and calculated forms of class, national and racial oppression, bear the brunt of this repression. Literally tens of thousands of innocent men and women, the overwhelming majority of them poor, fill the jails and prisons; hundreds of thousands more, including the most presumably respectable groups and individuals, are subject to police, FBI and military intelligence surveillance. The Nixon administration most recently responded to the massive protests against the war in Indochina by arresting more than 13,000 people and placing them in stadiums converted into detention centers.”

Angela Davis (1944) American political activist, scholar, and author

If They Come in The Morning (1971)

Women, Men, War, People

“Go and read the black book on communism and you'll find that under Mao's China they didn't eat babies but they boiled them to fertilise the fields.”

Silvio Berlusconi (1936) Italian politician

At a rally in Naples (28 March 2006) as quoted in "In quotes: Berlusconi in his own words" at BBC News (2 May 2006) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3041288.stm 2006

Books, Communication, Reading, Baby

“Carter gestured for silence. But the silence had already fallen. Archie, walking toward the platform for a close view of the proceedings, sucked in his breath, as if he were sipping this sweetest of all events. But he exhaled in surprise and stopped in his tracks as he saw Obie walk on the platform carrying the black box in his hands. Obie smiled maliciously when he caught Archie standing there in surprise, his mouth wide open in astonishment. No one had ever surprised the great Archie that way, and Obie's moment of triumph was a thing of beauty.”

Robert Cormier book The Chocolate War

Source: The Chocolate War (1974), p. 243

Smile, Beauty, Way, Silence