C. L. R. James Quotes

This continent, an open palm spread frank before the sky.

Deliberate choices are the only sacred things in the universe. Everything else is just hydrogen.

Probably the most honest "self-made person" ever was the one we heard say: "I got to the top the hard way - fighting my own laziness and ignorance every step of the way."

Aphorism, n.: A concise, clever statement you don’t think of until too late.

The circumstances which a man encounters with suffering are the result of his own mental inharmony.

When mental energy is allowed to follow the line of least resistance and to fall into easy channels, it is called weakness.

Every game, and almost every life situation, has short cuts: ways you can get better without learning the entire literature of the game from beginning to end.

I had ideas first, wealth second. It only worked in that order.

Worry will never solve tomorrow's problems. It will only take energy away from today.

Don't regret your mistakes. You'll always make mistakes. The better you are, the less mistakes you make. The only way to get better is to thoroughly analyze your mistakes.

Forget purpose. It’s okay to be happy without one. The quest for a single purpose has ruined many lives.

This is a new phase in history where art, science, business and spirit will join together in the pursuit of true wealth.

Of all the evil spirits abroad at this hour in the world, insincerity is the most dangerous.

Just laws are no restraint upon the freedom of the good, for the good man desires nothing which a just law will interfere with.

Justice without wisdom is impossible.

Where all are selfish, the sage is no better than the fool, and only rather more dangerous.

A single seed of fact will produce in a season or two a harvest of calumnies; but sensible men will pay no attention to them.

Morality rests upon a sense of obligation; and obligation has no meaning except as implying a Divine command, without which it would cease to be.

To tell men that they cannot help themselves is to fling them into recklessness and despair.

The essence of true nobility is neglect of self. Let the thought of self pass in, and the beauty of a great action is gone, like the bloom from a soiled flower.

We cannot live on probabilities. The faith in which we can live bravely and die in peace must be a certainty, so far as it professes to be a faith at all, or it is nothing.

Morality, when vigorously alive, sees farther than intellect, and provides unconsciously for intellectual difficulties.

Courage is, on all hands, considered as an essential of high character.

Philosophy goes no further than probabilities, and in every assertion keeps a doubt in reserve.

Thirst of power and of riches now bear sway, The passion and infirmity of age.

Thy plain and open nature sees mankind But in appearance, not what they are.

There is always a part of our being into which those who are dearer to us far than our own lives are yet unable to enter.

Where nature is sovereign, there is no need of austerity and self-denial.

The superstition of science scoffs at the superstition of faith.

Crime is not punished as an offense against God, but as prejudicial to society.

Sacrifice is the first element of religion, and resolves itself in theological language into the love of God.

Experience is no more transferable in morals than in art.

Involution always precedes evolution.

I've never been someone to count lines, look at it that way.

I got beat up by the comic-book kids when I was younger! They were cooler than me. Talk about levels of geekdom, I was a couple rungs below the kids who read comic books. Yeah. Not so cool, man.

I always like playing the bad guys. They have more fun!

Sometimes you move publicly, sometimes privately. Sometimes quietly, sometimes at the top of your voice.

You don't need to know who's playing on the White House tennis court to be a good president

I understand personally, ... that it is frustrating to lose presidential elections by narrow margins.

In a house without a genuine kitchen, one of the delights of growing up is lost.

I'm an escaped car thief. I broke out of prison to see the Cubs in the World Series.

To survive, our minds must taste redwood, and agate, octopi, bat, and in the bat's mouth, insect. It's hard to think like a planet, but we've got to try.

[There is no shortage of scientific talent.] But [I am] much less optimistic about the managerial vision [of the pharmaceutical industry] to catalyse these talents to deliver the results we all want.

We paid off our debts, we learned some, made friends and returned in 1950 with a larger view of life. I had, however, no home, no income of any kind and no prospects whatsoever.

I met Hilary Vaughan at a Student Ball in 1944 and we married in the summer of 1946, as soon as I graduated.

In retrospect, each of the steps toward this abyss seemed irrevocable, and yet they had all been so small!

But what can a man see of a library being one day in it?

A woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hinter legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to see it done at all.

O charitable philosopher, I beg you to help me. My mind is weak but my soul is strong. Kindle that soul, and the sacred fire shall never be extinguished.

For my own part I think no innocent species of wit or pleasantry should be suppressed: and that a good pun may be admitted among the smaller excellencies of lively conversation.