Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The Society is based on that great bottom law of human right, that nothing but crime can forfeit liberty. That no condition of birth, no shade of color, no mere misfortune of circumstances, can annul that birthright charter, which God has bequeathed to every being upon whom he has stamped his own image, by making him a free moral agent, and that he who robs his fellow man of this tramples upon right, subverts justice, outrages humanity, unsettles the foundation of human safety, and sacrilegiously assumes the prerogative of God.
I know the rules. I've been living here longer than you have." He cracks a smile then. He nudges me back. "Hardly." "Born and raised. You're a transplant." I nudge him again, a little harder, and he laughs and tries to catch hold of my arm. I squirm away, giggling, and he stretches out to tickle my stomach. "Country bumpkin!" I squeal, as he grabs out and wrestles me back onto the blanket, laughing. "City slicker," he says, rolling over on top of me, and then kisses me. Everything dissolves: heat, explosions of color, floating.
The New Deal never rethought the draconian racist immigration restriction policies of the 20s, of course, but its electoral base rested significantly on "ethnic" voters, whose activism was both hemmed in and rewarded by the Democrats. Southern and Eastern Europeans were included as secondary leaders of the new industrial unions, and as entitled citizens qualified for social security, unemployment compensation, and fair labor standards protections, even as workers of color were largely left out of key areas of the welfare state.
I started asking friends, my white friends around, I said, "What's something that you think all Asians have in common?" They almost always immediately said, "Slanted eyes." I thought that's really interesting. No. 1, it simply isn't true. Not all Asian Americans have slanted eyes, and of course, Asians aren't the only ethnic identities to have them. No. 2, we could talk about our slant on life and what it's like to be people of color, while at the same time, using this outdated and obscure racial slur, and turning it on its head.
The word itself has another color. It’s not a word with any resonance, although the e was once pronounced. There is only the bump now between b and l, the relief at the end, the whew. It hasn’t the sly turn which crimson takes halfway through, yellow’s deceptive jelly, or the rolled-down sound in brown. It hasn’t violet’s rapid sexual shudder or like a rough road the irregularity of ultramarine, the low puddle in mauve like a pancake covered in cream, the disapproving purse to pink, the assertive brevity of red, the whine of green.
Because there is something in the touch of flesh with flesh which abrogates, cuts sharp and straight across the devious intricate channels of decorous ordering, which enemies as well as lovers know because it makes them both:---touch and touch of that which is the citadel of the central I-Am's private own: not spirit, soul; the liquorish and ungirdled mind is anyone's to take in any any darkened hallway of this earthly tenement. But let flesh touch with flesh, and watch the fall of all the eggshell shibboleth of caste and color too.
Each thing organizes the space around it, rebuffing or sidling up against other things; each thing calls, gestures, beckons to other beings or battles them for our attention; things expose themselves to the sun or retreat among the shadows, shouting with their loud colors or whispering with their seeds; rocks snag lichen spores from the air and shelter spiders under their flanks; clouds converse with the fathomless blue and metamorphose into one another; they spill rain upon the land, which gathers in rivulets and carves out canyons.
If you could extend the elective franchise to all persons of color who can read the Constitution of the United States in English and write their names and to all persons of color who own real estate valued at not less than two hundred and fifty dollars and pay taxes thereon, and would completely disarm the adversary. This you can do with perfect safety. And as a consequence, the radicals, who are wild upon negro franchise, will be completely foiled in their attempts to keep the Southern States from renewing their relations to the Union.
Then very slowly I go to slightly lighter colors until little by little, the forms begin to take shape and I start to see what is happening. Since I never plan in advance, I simply let myself be led by instinct, taste and intuition. And it is in this manner that I find myself creating visions that I have never before imagined. And little by little certain color effects develop that excite me and I find the painting itself leading me on and I become only an instrument of a greater, wiser force...or being...or intelligence than I myself am.
The most important thing, of course, is that you should look more stunning than you have ever looked in your life. How many excuses do you have to wear a dress bigger than anyone else's, at a party just for you, where everyone has to burst into tears from how gorgeous you look while you prance around in front of them? Remember, your lifelong happiness depends on this one article of clothing. If it doesn't look good, you're not a bride. You're just some idiot in a big white thing - a color unflattering to about 93 percent of the population.
If a Republican came along and suggested free abortions for people on Medicaid, the first person to stand up would be Jesse Jackson and start shouting, "Racism!" And then Al Sharpton wouldn't be as far behind, and they would call it an attempt to eliminate people of color by the dastardly, rascally Republicans. But yet Hillary Clinton is proposing it and is being feted, praised to the heavens for such a compassionate plan. The Democrats are wiping out their own people. That's why they need open borders for replacements to be brought in ASAP.
A painting is an object which has an emphatic frontal surface. On such a surface, I paint a black band which does not recede, a color band which does not obtrude, a white square or rectangle which does not move back or forth, to or fro, or up or down; there is also a painted white exterior frame band which is edged round the edge to the black. Every part is painted and contiguous to its neighbor; no part is above or below any other part. There is no hierarchy. There is no ambiguity. There is no illusion. There is no space or interval (time).
Black History is enjoying the life of our ancestors who paved the way for every African-American. No matter what color you are, the history of Blacks affected everyone; that's why we should cherish and respect Black history. Black history changed America and is continuing to change and shape our country. Black history is about everyone coming together to better themselves and America. Black history is being comfortable in your own skin no matter what color you are. Black history makes me proud of where I came from and where I am going in life.
That is again the same story played on a more subtle level. That's what the religious people have been doing down the ages - pious egoists they have been. They have made their ego even more decorated; it has taken the color of religion and holiness. Your ego is better than the ego of a saint; your ego is better, far better - because your ego is very gross, and the gross ego can be understood and dropped more easily than the subtle. The subtle ego goes on playing such games that it is very difficult. One will need absolute awareness to watch it.
As my friend Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe has argued persuasively, there is an element of positivity in the visible world, and in color particularly, that totally eludes the historicity of language, with its protocols of absence and polarity. The color red, as an attribute of the world, is always there. It is something other than the absence of yellow and blue--and, thus, when that red becomes less red, it becomes more one or the other. It never exists in a linguistic condition of degradation or excess that must necessarily derive from our expectations.
He created the flavors! He created the colors. He created it all, and he did it all out of the overflow of his perfections. It’s not like he was thinking, ‘Oh, I’ve got some fajita flavoring over here. I know: let’s put it on the cow and the chicken.’ He created the avocado to have a certain flavor; he created the skirt steak, the fillet, and the tenderloin to have certain flavors. That was God’s doing. So every aspect of creation, from the largest galaxy to the tiniest burst of flavor in food or drink or seasoning, radiates the goodness of God.
Bastian had climbed a dune of purplish-red sand and all around him he saw nothing but hill after hill of every imaginable color. Each hill revealed a shade or tint that occured in no other. The nearest was cobalt blue, another was saffron yellow, then came crimson red, then indigo, apple green, sky blue, orange, peach, mauve, turquoise blue, lilac, moss green, ruby red, burnt umber, Indian yellow, vermillion, lapis lazuli, and so on from horizon to horizon. And between the hill, separating color from color, flowed streams of gold and silver sand.
Well I started out on guitar, so it is still the mainstay of my music. But I have recently been working very hard on my piano, and it is coming along to the point where it is taking more of the spotlight. It has been my plan to be able to make music well into my old age, and sitting down seems like a good idea. Also, I don't have to carry the piano on the road. I haven't been playing the banjo much of late because of the difficulties of travelling with so much gear. But maybe I'll bring it to Japan. It adds a different color to the musical palette.
When I look at a wildlife or nature subject, I dont see the feathers in the wings, I just count the wings. I see exciting shapes, color combinations, patterns, textures, fascinating behavior and endless possibilities for making interesting pictures. I regard the picture as an ecosystem in which all the elements are interrelated, interdependent, perfectly balanced, without trimming or unutilized parts; and herein lies the lure of the painting; in a world of chaos, the picture is one small rectangle in which the artist can create an ordered universe.
GATHERING LEAVES Spades take up leaves No better than spoons, And bags full of leaves Are light as balloons. I make a great noise Of rustling all day Like rabbit and deer Running away. But the mountains I raise Elude my embrace, Flowing over my arms And into my face. I may load and unload Again and again Till I fill the whole shed, And what have I then? Next to nothing for weight, And since they grew duller From contact with earth, Next to nothing for color. Next to nothing for use. But a crop is a crop, And who's to say where The harvest shall stop?
Pinball games were constrained by physical limitations, ultimately by the physical laws that govern the motion of a small metal ball. The video world knows no such bounds. Objects fly, spin, accelerate, change shape and color, disappear and reappear. Their behavior, like the behavior of anything created by a computer program, is limited only by the programmer's imagination. The objects in a video game are representations of objects. And a representation of a ball, unlike a real one, never need obey the laws of gravity unless its programmer wants it to.
The cardinal points are a direct reference to the astrological colures. The Cardinals surround the Pope as the cardinal points surround the sun. The sun casts its rays on the Houses as it passes, turning them crimson. The color worn by the physical Cardinals is red, to symbolize that they are illuminated by their proximity to the Pope, the representative of God on earth. The word Pope, may also be a derivative of the word in Egyptian for the evil serpent Apep, Apophis or Apopsa (See Poop Deck and Pupa, and Pepsi, Pepsid, Dr. Pepper, Sgt. Pepper, etc,).
Go and change your gown, Mary," Daniel interjected. "I'm partial to gold. If you've a gown in that color, wear it to please me. If not, white will do well enough. I'm wedding you, Lady Mary." Lord Daniel Ferguson caught Lady Mary before she hit the floor. He wasn't at all irritated that his intended had just fainted dead away, and he actually let out a full burst of laughter as he swept Mary up into his arms and held her against his chest. "She's overcome with gratitude, Alec," Daniel called out to his friend. "Aye, Daniel, I can see she is," Alec answered.
It’s the leftover humans. The survivors. They’re the ones I can’t stand to look at, although on many occasions I still fail. I deliberately seek out the colors to keep my mind off them, but now and then, I witness the ones who are left behind, crumbling among the jigsaw puzzle of realization, despair, and surprises. They have punctured hearts. They have beaten lungs. Which in turn brings me to the subject I am telling you about tonight, or today, or whatever the hour and color. It’s the story of one of those perpetual survivors –an expert at being left behind.
Some things cannot be spoken or discovered until we have been stuck, incapacitated, or blown off course for a while. Plain sailing is pleasant, but you are not going to explore many unknown realms that way. We articulate the truth of a situation by carrying the whole experience in the voice and allowing the process to blossom of its own accord. Out of the cross-grain of experience appears a voice that not only sums up the process we have gone through, but allows the soul to recognize in its timbre, the color, texture, and complicated entanglements of being alive.
…“white supremacy” is a much more useful term for understanding the complicity of people of color in upholding and maintaining racial hierarchies that do not involve force (i.e slavery, apartheid) than the term “internalized racism”- a term most often used to suggest that black people have absorbed negative feelings and attitudes about blackness. The term “white supremacy” enables us to recognize not only that black people are socialized to embody the values and attitudes of white supremacy, but we can exercise “white supremacist control” over other black people.
To solve the new century's mounting social and environmental problems, people of color activist and white activists need to be able to join forces. But all too often, the unconscious racism of white activists stands in the way of any effective, worthwhile collaboration. The Challenging White Supremacy Workshop is the most powerful tool that I have seen for removing the barriers to true partnerships between people of color and white folks. If the CWS trainings were mandatory for all white activists, the progressive movement in the United States would be unstoppable.
I do very, very, very simple, skimpy doodles, nothing too committed. Because people tend to fall in love if they like it - if you color it in and they like it, then they want exactly those colors, even if they were just indications. You really have to do it as simple as possible so they can concentrate on the idea and composition. And then all of the energy goes into making the final piece. And the final piece can be anything - it can be a drawing, a painting, a collage - and usually, it's obvious what that should be. Usually, the idea dictates what medium you use.
His musical inspiration operates in a world uncluttered by conventional bar lines, conventional chord changes, and conventional ways of blowing or fingering a saxophone. Such practical 'limitations' did not even have to be overcome in his music; they somehow never existed for him. Despite this - or more accurately, because of this - his playing has a deep inner logic. Not an obvious surface logic, it is based on subtleties of reaction, subtleties of timing and color that are, I think, quite new to jazz - at least they have never appeared in so pure and direct a form.
New Orleans was a thrilling place of all kinds of races, it was a dangerous place. It was really and truly the only international city on the continent of North America. There were all different races and everything was celebrated, and it was a place of difference, and everybody was different and it was so odd, the minute that America took over, the minute that the Louisiana territory became part of the United States of America, instantly you were either black or white. There was no nuance. and so a free man of color who could own property was suddenly not allowed to.
When I’m running, there’s always this split second when the pain is ripping through me and I can hardly breathe and all I see is color and blur—and in that split second, right as the pain crests, and becomes too much, and there’s a whiteness going through me, I see something to my left, a flicker of color […]—and I know then, too, that if I only turn my head he’ll be there, laughing, watching me, and holding out his arms. I don’t ever turn my head to look, of course. But one day I will. One day I will, and he’ll be back, and everything will be okay. And until then: I run.
One of the reasons that so many people of color and poor people are in prison is that the deindustrialization of the economy has led to the creation of new economies and the expansion of some old ones – I have already mentioned the drug trade and the market for sexual services. At the same time, though, there are any number of communities that more than welcome prisons as a source of employment. Communities even compete with one another to be the site where new prisons will be constructed because prisons create a significant number of relatively good jobs for their residents
What have we got here in America that we believe we cannot live without? We have the most varied and imaginative bathrooms in the world, we have kitchens with the most gimmicks, we have houses with every possible electrical gadget to save ourselves all kinds of trouble - all so that we can have leisure. Leisure, leisure, leisure! So that we don't go mad in the leisure, we have color TV. So that there will never, never, be a moment of silence, we have radio and Muzak. We can't stand silence, because silence includes thinking. And if we thought, we would have to face ourselves.
... and we are not alone in this slavery. there are millions of others throughout the world, of all colors and races and creeds. this we must remember. there are many of our people who hate the poor of the white race, and they hate us. the people in this town living by the river who work in the mills. people who are almost as much in need as we are ourselves. this hatred is a great evil, and no good can ever come from it... the injustice of need must bring us all together and not separate us. we must remember that we all make the things of this earth of value because of labor.
All that is limited by form, semblance, sound, color is called object. Among them all, man alone is more than an object. Though, like objects, he has form and semblance, He is not limited to form. He is more. He can attain to formlessness. When he is beyond form and semblance, beyond "this" and "that," where is the comparison with another object? Where is the conflict? What can stand in his way? He will rest in his eternal place which is no-place. He will be hidden in his own unfathomable secret. His nature sinks to its root in the One. His vitality, his power hide in secret Tao.
One of the weaknesses of much abstract painting is the attempt to substitute the inventions of the intellect for a pristine imaginative conception. The inner life of a human being is a vast and varied realm and does not concern itself alone with stimulating arrangements of color, form and design. The term 'life' as used in art is something not to be held in contempt, for it applies all of its existence, and the province of art is to react to it and not to shun it. Painting will have to deal more fully and less obliquely with life and nature's phenomena before it can again be great.
At some time in the recent past someone had decided to brighten the ancient corridors of the University by painting them, having some vague notion that Learning Should Be Fun. It hadn’t worked. It’s a fact known throughout the universes that no matter how carefully the colors are chosen, institutional decor ends up as either vomit green, unmentionable brown, nicotine yellow or surgical appliance pink. By some little-understood process of sympathetic resonance, corridors painted in those colors always smell slightly of boiled cabbage—even if no cabbage is ever cooked in the vicinity.
There are only five notes in the musical scale, but their variations are so many that they cannot all be heard. There are only five basic colors, but their variations are so many that they cannot all be seen. There are only five basic flavors, but their variations are so many that they cannot all be tasted. There are only two kinds of charge in battle, the unorthodox surprise attack and the orthodox direct attack, but variations of the unorthodox and the orthodox are endless. The unorthodox and the orthodox give rise to each other, like a beginningless circle-who could exhaust them?
The heavy eyelids snapped open. Jack froze. A huge gold-and-amber eye, as big as a dinner plater, stared at him. The dark pupil shrank, focusing. Jack stood very still. The colossal head turned, the scaled lip only three feet from Jack. The golden eyes gazed at him, wirling with fiery color. Jack breathed in tiny, shallow breaths. Dont blink. Don't blink... Two gusts of wind erutped from the wyvern's nostrils Jack jumped straight up, bounced off the ground into another jump, and scrambled up the nearest tree. In the clearing, Gaston bent over, guffawing like an idiot. 'It's not funny!
In Sumter and other counties [in South Carolina] the whites are resorting to intimidation and violence to prevent the colored people from organizing for the elections. The division there is still on the color line. Substantially all the whites are Democrats and all the colored people are Republicans. There is no political principle in dispute between them. The whites have the intelligence, the property, and the courage which make power. The negroes are for the most part ignorant, poor, and timid. My view is that the whites must be divided there before a better state of things will prevail.
I definitely feel like it took me a while to learn the baseline things you have to do if you want people to hear you. That's why I've had the same haircut for the entire time that I've been on television and that's why I wear literally the same jacket every day. I keep all the clothes I wear on TV in my office on a little hanging rack. My girlfriend calls it all the colors of the German rainbow. Grays, blacks, a slightly greenish gray for the days that I'm feeling particularly festive. I'm not trying to accomplish anything in the way I look other than to be boring enough for people to hear me.
