quotes

I Know My Soul

I plucked my soul out its secret place,
And held it to the mirror of my eye,
To see it like a star against the sky,
A twitching body quivering in space,
A spark of passion shining on my face.
And I explored it to determine why
this awful key to my infinity
Conspires to rob me of sweet joy and grace.
And if the sign may not be fully read,
If I can comprehend but not control,
I need not gloom my days with futile dread,
Because I see a part and not the whole.
Contemplating the strange, I’m comforted
By this narcotic thought: I know my soul.
– by Claude McKay

Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth–more than ruin–more even than death…. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man. – Bertrand Russell

As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.L
– H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Many interviewers when they come to talk to me, think they’re being progressive by not mentioning in their stories any longer that I’m black. I tell them, ‘Don’t stop now. If I shot somebody you’d mention it.’
– Colin Powell, 1991

Once upon a time, a woman was picking up firewood. She came upon a poisonous snake frozen in the snow. She took the snake home and nursed it back to health. One day the snake bit her on the cheek. As she lay dying, she asked the snake, “Why have you done this to me?” And the snake answered, “Look, bitch, you knew I was a snake.” – Warren Red Cloud, from Natural Born Killers

A man of genius makes no mistakes; his errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.
– James Joyce

“Winston Churchill was once at the urinals in the House of Commons when the Labour prime minister, Clement Attlee, walked in. Churchill turned his back on him. ‘Feeling stand-offish, today, Winston?’ asked Attlee. ‘No,’ replied Churchill, ‘scared. Every time you see something big you want to nationalize it.'” – The Economist, 12/20/97

Love takes off the mask that we fear we cannot live with out and know we cannot live within. I use the word love here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace–not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth.
– james baldwin the fire next time
(stolen from honeysoul)

On April 4, 1967, as the war in Vietnam was reaching its full fury, Martin Luther King Jr. said, “A time comes when silence is betrayal.” And he said, “Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak.”

you really, really should read this.

Black people shout because they are immortal and sense this. Black people sense this because we have been dying for years, shouting and dying, yet here black people are, the salt of the earth. Here we are.

Black people tend to shout because nothing can stop a new meaning in life with each passing generation.

Black people tend to shout because they dare to have the nerve not to be silent.

If black people didn’t shout, who would?
– Why Black People Tend to Shout by Ralph Wiley

“I don’t mean to impose, but I am the ocean.”
-from The Salton Sea

Meatwad make the money see, Meatwad get the honeys G. Drivin in my car, livin like a star, ice on my fingers and my toes and I’m a Taurus. Cause we are the Aqua Teens, make the homeys say ho and the girlies wanna scream.

sho ya right.

truth is a pathless land.

man cannot come to it through any organisation, through any creed, through any dogma, priest or ritual, nor through any philosophical knowledge or psychological technique.
he has to find it through the mirror of relationship, through the understanding of the contents of his own mind, through observation and not through intellectual analysis or introspective dissection. – jidda krishnamurti

“Baseball is a red-blooded sport for red-blooded men. It’s no pink tea, and mollycoddles had better stay out.” – Ty Cobb

finals is done. law school is no pink tea.

“better to build schoolrooms for the boys than prisons and gallows for the men” – eliza cook, as seen on a bumper sticker