GRATITUDE IS LIKE LOOKING THROUGH THE EYES OF YOUR SOUL AND SEEING THE GOOD IN EVERYTHING. BERNADETTE MORRIS
JAMES BALDWIN 1924-1987 “Go Tell it Too the Mountain”
ONE CANNOT DENY THE HUMANITY OF ANOTHER WITHOUT DIMINISHING ONE’S OWN.
THE challenge is in the moment; the time is always now.
YOU’VE GOT TO TELL THE WORLD how to treat you. If the world tells you how you are going to be treated, you are in trouble.
NEITHER LOVE NOR TERROR MAKES ONE BLIND: indifference makes one blind.
PEOPLE WHO BELIEVE they are strong-willed and the masters of their destiny can only continue to believe this by becoming specialists in self-deception.
THE GRTEAT FORCE OF HISTORY comes from the fact that we carry it within us, are unconsciously controlled by it in many ways, and history is literally present in a
YOU DON’T REALIZE YOU’RE INTELLIGENT until it gets you into trouble.
PEOPLE who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction.
TO BE BLACK AND CONSCIOUS IN AMERICA IS TO BE IN A CONSTANT STATE OF RAGE.
KNOW FROM WHENCE YOU CAME. IF YOU KNOW WHENCE YOU CAME, THERE ARE ABSOLUTELY NO LIMITATIONS TO WHERE YOU CAN GO.
YOU CANNOT FIX WHAT YOU WILL NOT FACE.
IN ORDER TO HAVE A CONVERSATION with someone you must reveal yourself.
THE ROLE OF THE ARTIST is exactly the same as the role of the lover. If I love you, I have to make you conscious of the things you don’t see.
GOD BE THANKED FOR BOOKS! They are the voices of the distant and the dead.
IT IS ASTONISHING the lengths to which a person, or a people, will go in order to avoid a truthful mirror.
ARTISTS ARE HERE TO DISTURB THE PEACE.
THE PLACE IN WHICH I’LL FIT WILL NOT EXIST UNTIL I MAKE IT.
IT WAS DOSTOEVSKY AND DICKENS who taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who ever had been alive. Only if we face these open wounds in ourselves can we understand them in other people.
ANYONE WHO IS TRYING TO BE CONSCIOUS MUST BEGIN TO DISMISS the vocabulary which we’ve used so long to cover it up, to lie about the way things are.
A CIVILIZATION IS NOT DESTROYED BY WICKED PEOPLE; it is not necessary that people be wicked but only that they be spineless.
THE AMERICAN IDEA OF RACIAL PROGRESS IS MEASURED BY HOW FAST I BECOME WHITE.
TRUST LIFE. and it will teach you, in joy and sorrow, all you need to know.
THERE ARE SO MANY WAYS OF BEING DESPICABLE it quite make’s one’s head spin. But the way to be really despicable is to be contemptuous of other people’s pain.
PEOPLE WHO TREAT OTHER PEOPLE as less than human must not be surprised when the bread they have cast on the waters comes floating back to them, poisoned.
I LOVE AMERICA more than any other country in the world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.
THE MOST DANGEROUS CREATION of any society is the man who has nothing to lose.
LOVE takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.
IT TOOK MANY YEARS OF VOMITING up all the filth I’d been taught about myself, and half-believed, before I was able to walk on the earth as though I had a right to be here.
EVERY HUMAN BEING IS AN UNPRECEDENTED MIRACLE.
REMEMBER, to hate, to be silent, is demeaning. it means you’re afraid of the other side of the coin — to love and be loved.
WHAT PASSES FOR IDENTITY IN AMERICA is a series of myths about one’s heroic ancestors. it’s astounding to me, for example, that so many people really seem to believe that the country was founded by a band of heroes who wanted to be free.
IT DEMANDS A GREAT SPIRITUAL resilience not to hate the hater whose foot is on your neck, and an even greater miracle of perception and charity not to teach your children to hate.
IT COMES AS A GREAT SHOCK . . . to discover that the flag to which you have pledged allegiance . . . has not pledged allegiance to you. it comes as a great shock to see Gary Cooper killing off the Indians, and although you are rooting foe Gary Cooper, that the Indians are you.
THERE ARE TOO MANY THINGS we do not wish to know about ourselves. People are not, for example, terribly anxious to be equal (equal, after all, to what and to whom?) but they love the idea of being superior.
PEOPLE DON’T HAVE ANY MERCY. They tear you limb from limb, in the name of love. Then, when you’re dead, when they’ve killed you by what they made you go though, they say you didn’t have any character. They weep big, bitter tears — not for you. for themselves, because they’ve lost their toy.
THE great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, are unconsciously controlled by it in many ways and history is literally present in all that we do.
let’s try trusting each other