C. L. R. James Quotes

By your grace, I will not despair. I believe that I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.

The Commons, faithful to their system, remained in a wise and masterly inactivity.

The frivolous work of polished idleness.

Maxims are the condensed good sense of nations.

Whatever is popular deserves attention.

A bad cause seldom fails to betray itself.

Congress shall never disarm any citizen unless such as are or have been in actual rebellion.

Democracy is the most vile form of government.

Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob.

If this spirit shall ever be so far debased, as to tolerate a law not obligatory on the legislature, as well as on the people, the people will be prepared to tolerate any thing but liberty.

A certain degree of preparation for war . . . affords also the best security for the continuance of peace.

Precedents once established are so much positive power.

One hundred and seventy-three despots would surely be as oppressive as one.

Testimony of all ages forces us to admit that war is among the most dangerous enemies to liberty, and that the executive is the branch most favored by it of all the branches of Power.

Who are to be the electors of the Federal Representatives? Not the rich, more than the poor

The danger from legislative usurpations, which, by assembling all power in the same hands, must lead to the same tyranny as is threatened by executive usurpations.

There never was an assembly of men, charged with a great and arduous trust, who were more pure in their motives, or more exclusively or anxiously devoted to the object committed to them.

The most productive system of finance will always be the least burdensome.

No power over the freedom of religion [is] delegated to the United States by the Constitution.

An efficient militia is authorized and contemplated by the Constitution and required by the spirit and safety of free government.

The security intended to the general liberty consists in the frequent election and in the rotation of the members of Congress.

It is the mutual duty of all to practice Christian forbearance, love, and charity toward each other.

Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society.

The Constitution of the United States was created by the people of the United States composing the respective states, who alone had the right.

In a free government the security for civil rights must be the same as that for religious rights.

Power is of an encroaching nature.

The internal effects of a mutable policy are still more calamitous. It poisons the blessings of liberty itself.

Measures should be enacted which, without violating the rights of property, would reduce extreme wealth towards a state of mediocrity, and raise extreme indigence towards a state of comfort.

It is certain that every class is interested in [educational] establishments which give to the human mind its highest improvements, and to every Country its truest and most durable celebrity.

Government destitute of energy, will ever produce anarchy.

That diabolical Hell conceived principle of persecution rages amoung some and to their eternal Infamy the Clergy can furnish their Quota of Imps for such business.

We are teaching the world the great truth that Governments do better without Kings & Nobles than with them.

The inference to which we are brought is that the causes of faction cannot be removed and that relief is only to be sought in the means of controlling its effects.

All that seems indispensible in stating the account between the dead and the living, is to see that the debts against the latter do not exceed the advances made by the former.

In a society under the forms of which the stronger faction can readily unite and oppress the weaker, anarchy may as truly be said to reign as in a state of nature.

The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man; and we see them everywhere brought into different degrees of activity, according to the different circumstances of civil society.

To consider the degree of concord which ultimately prevailed as less than a miracle.

An armed and trained militia is the firmest bulwark of republics - that without standing armies their liberty can never be in danger, nor with large ones safe.

Any reading not of a vicious species must be a good substitute for the amusements too apt to fill up the leisure of the labouring classes.

Union of religious sentiments begets a surprising confidence.

Among the features peculiar to the political system of the United States, is the perfect equality of rights which it secures to every religious sect.

The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man.

Another of my wishes is to depend as little as possible on the labour of slaves.

We have seen the mere distinction of color made in the most enlightened period of time, a ground of the most oppressive dominion ever exercised by man over man.

A local spirit will infallibly prevail much more in the members of Congress than a national spirit will prevail in the legislatures of the particular States.

The boundary between real life and acting is hard to find.

The funny thing about me is I move from genre to genre, but I essentially shoot all the movies the same way.

Like all science, psychology is knowledge; and like science again, it is knowledge of a definite thing, the mind.

Heredity provides for the modification of its own machinery.

The development of the meaning attaching to the personal self, the conscious being, is the subject matter of the history of psychology.