top of page
.png){kind=small}
"In any event, the sloppy and fatuous nature of American good will can never be relied upon to deal with hard problems. These have been dealt with, when they have been dealt with at all, out of necessity-and in political terms, anyway, necessity means concessions made in order to stay on top."
Standard
Customized
Exlpore more Governance quotes
"Indeed, it is a sign of marked political weakness in anycommonwealth if the people tend to be carried away by mere oratory, if theytend to value words in and for themselves, as divorced from the deeds for whichthey are supposed to stand. The phrase-maker, the phrase-monger, the readytalker, however great his power, whose speech does not make for courage,sobriety, and right understanding, is simply a noxious element in the bodypolitic, and it speaks ill for the public if he has influence over them. To admirethe gift of oratory without regard to the moral quality behind the gift is to dowrong to the republic."
"We Americans have many grave problems to solve, many threatening evils to fight, and many deeds to do, if, as we hope and believe, we have the wisdom, the strength, and the courage and the virtue to do them. But we must face facts as they are. We must neither surrender ourselves to a foolish optimism, nor succumb to a timid and ignoble pessimism."
"In reality, commissions rarely solve complicated problems. Therefore, the following question arises: what is worse " to establish a commission knowing it cannot solve a complicated problem, or to believe that the commission will truly solve such a problem?"
"Politics is so difficult, it's generally only people who aren't quite up to the task who feel convinced they are."
"Let us remind our leaders that there is no place for personal interests in politics."
"M-governance is empowered governance. It has the potential to make development a truly inclusive and comprehensive mass movement. It puts governance into everyone's reach. It puts governance in your hands 24/7."
"Either cry for exchanging new currency notes for couple of days or crib for corruption for ages and generations with old one. Choice is yours."
"I think the positive competition between states in India is one of the most positive dynamics that the country has."
"There is a lot of talk about "rigged games" as of late. Big government is the most insipid of all "rigged games". There is no choice available to the public allowing it to avoid a big over-arching government. You can always chose not do business with a big corporation. Corporations that are distasteful can be avoided. A big, powerful, government bent on intrusion cannot be avoided."
"Nothing lasts longer than a temporary government program."
Explore more quotes by James Baldwin
"Freedom is not something that anybody can be given. Freedom is something people take, and people are as free as they want to be."
"You read something which you thought only happened to you, and you discovered it happened 100 years ago to Dostoyevsky."
"Whether in private debate or in public, any attempt I made to explain how the Black Muslim movement came about, and how it has achieved such force, was met with a blankness that revealed the little connection that the liberals' attitudes have with their perceptions or their lives, or even their knowledge-revealed, in fact, that they could deal with the Negro as a symbol or a victim but had no sense of him as a man."
"White Americans find it as difficult as white people elsewhere do to divest themselves of the notion that they are in possession of some intrinsic value that black people need, or want. And this assumption-which, for example, makes the solution to the Negro problem depend on the speed with which Negroes accept and adopt white standards-is revealed in all kinds of striking ways, from Bobby Kennedy's assurance that a Negro can become President in forty years to the unfortunate tone of warm congratulation with which so many liberals address their Negro equals."
"I am very much concerned that American Negroes achieve their freedom here in the United States. But I am also concerned for their dignity, for the health of their souls, and must oppose any attempt that Negroes may make to do to others what has been done to them."
"There appears to be a vast amount of confusion on this point, but I do not know many Negroes who are eager to be "accepted" by white people, still less to be loved by them; they, the blacks, simply don't wish to be beaten over the head by the whites every instant of our brief passage on this planet. White people in this country will have quite enough to do in learning how to accept and love themselves and each other, and when they have achieved this -- which will not be tomorrow and will not be today and may very well be never -- the Negro problem will no longer exist, for it will no longer be needed."
"What the times demand, and in an unprecedented fashion, is that one be--not seem--outrageous, independent, anarchical. That one be thoroughly disciplined--as a means of being spontaneous. That one resist at whatever cost the fearful pressures placed on one to lie about one's own experience. For in the same way that the writer scarcely ever had a more uneasy time, he has never been needed more."
"All that hatred down there," he said, "all that hatred and misery and love. It's a wonder it doesn't blow the avenue apart."
bottom of page