When one begins looking for influences one finds them by the score. I haven't thought much about my own, not enough anyway; I hazard that the King James Bible, the rhetoric of the store-front church, something ironic and violent and perpetually understated in Negro speech - and something of Dickens' love for bravura - have something to do with me today; but I wouldn't stake my life on it. Likewise, innumerable people have helped me in many ways; but finally, I suppose, the most difficult (and most rewarding) thing in my life has been the fact that I was born a Negro and was forced, therefore, to effect some kind of truce with this reality.
James BaldwinRelated topics
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You listen and live prudently, in fact you do not live at all, but work and save and are burdened with cares; and so your whole life passes. Then, all of a sudden, the whole thing turns upside down; times come when the world mocks at reason, when the Church shuts its doors and is silent, when authority becomes mere brute force, when they who have made their money honestly and with the sweat of their brows lose both their time and their money, and the violent win the game. No one recognizes your efforts and there is no one to help or advise you how to keep what you have earned and saved. Can this be? Surely this cannot be?
Ivo Andrić
The divine in Jesus does not denote a violent rupture of the course of human history with the exclusion of all causal connection and all human personality, but it lies at the basis of all this history from beginning to end; it dwells in it as the divine Logos, as the rational aptitude of human nature, as impulse to the true and good, as God-consciousness. All progress in the development of mankind from the lowest grades upward, every achievement of culture which makes rude nature the servant of reason, every formation of higher ethical ideals, and every clarifying and deepening of the God-consciousness, is an effect and a revelation of the divine Logos dwelling in our race.
Otto Pfleiderer
I want to make it perfectly clear that I believe it is incumbent on us to conduct our lives in a way that takes into account all the consequences of our actions, including the consequences to other people, and the consequences to the environment. I believe it is essential to act in ways that are sympathetic to the environment, now and in the future. I believe that the world has genuine problems and I believe they must be addressed effectively.
But I also think that deciding what constitutes responsible action is immensely difficult, and I believe the consequences of our actions are often difficult to know in advance.
Michael Crichton
As a nation we grumble, we never worry, and the more difficult times are, the more cheerful we become. Indifferent we may be in many ways to what is going on in the world outside, but this indifference is soon shed in times of difficulty. We are always serene in times of difficulty. We are not a military nation, but we are great fighters-as we ought to be, from the stock of which I have told you. We have staying power, we are not rattled. I remember being very amused and rather pleased by a writer in The Times, who said that my spiritual home was in the last ditch. If that be so, I shared that ditch with most of my fellow-countrymen.
Stanley Baldwin
We cannot suppose that our opposition has made a corrupt and dissipated nation more friendly to America, or created in them a greater respect for the rights of mankind. We can therefore expect a restoration and establishment of our privileges, and a compensation for the injuries we have received, from their want of power, from their fears, and not from their virtues. The unanimity and valor, which will effect an honorable peace, can render a future contest for our liberties unnecessary. He who has strength to chain down the wolf is a madman if he let him loose without drawing his teeth and paring his nails.
Samuel Adams