C. L. R. James Quotes

The difference between doing something and not doing something is doing something.

Absence, the highest form of presence.

Beliefs are dangerous. Beliefs allow the mind to stop functioning. A non-functioning mind is clinically dead. Believe in nothing.

Children are not casual guests in our home. They have been loaned to us temporarily for the purpose of loving them and instilling a foundation of values on which their future lives will be built.

Light is not so much something that reveals, as it is itself the revelation.

The operations of the federal government will be most extensive and important in times of war and danger; those of the State governments, in times of peace and security.

Snooker is just chess with balls.

A free, virtuous, and enlightened people must know full well the great principles and causes upon which their happiness depends.

Mistakes are the portals of discovery.

The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.

Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm.

I can't believe what you say, because I see what you do.

There is not past, no future; everything flows in an eternal present.

My desire is to set up a situation to which I take you and let you see. It becomes your experience.

With no object no image and no focus, what are you looking at? You are looking at you looking.

Quick as a hummingbird...she darts so eagerly, swiftly, sweetly dipping into the flowers of my heart.

You are who you are meant to be. Dance as if no one's watching. Love as if it's all you know. Dream as if you'll live forever. Live as if you'll die today.

It took many years of vomiting up all the filth I’d been taught about myself, and half-believed, before I was able to walk on the earth as though I had a right to be here.

All we can do when we think of kids today is think of more hours of school, earlier age at the computer, and curfews. Who would want to grow up in that world?

If you can change your mind, you can change your life.

Our country may be likened to a new house. We lack many things, but we possess the most precious of all - liberty!

Amsterdam was a great surprise to me. I had always thought of Venice as the city of canals; it had never entered my mind that I should find similar conditions in a Dutch town.

In Science, it is when we take some interest in the great discoverers and their lives that it becomes endurable, and only when we begin to trace the development of ideas that it becomes fascinating.

Your mind will give back to you exactly what you put into it.

Don't go to men who are willing to kill themselves driving in circles looking for normality.

There is nothing more important than parents passing on a generational legacy of faith and values to their children.

My answer to the racial problem in America is to not deal with it at all. The founding fathers dealt with it when they made the Constitution.

A circle is the reflection of eternity. It has no beginning and it has no end - and if you put several circles over each other, then you get a spiral.

You are young, gifted, and Black. We must begin to tell our young, There's a world waiting for you, Yours is the quest that's just begun.

Space has a way of looking. It seems like it has a presence of vision. When you come into it, it is there, it’s been waiting for you.

I think one day youll find that you're the hero you've been looking for.

If homes are going to survive, it will be because husbands and fathers again place their families at the highest level on their system of priorities.

I think the prime reason for existence, for living in this world is discovery.

I have looked into most philosophical systems and I have seen that none will work without God.

This body holding me reminds me of my own mortality. Embrace this moment, remember: we are eternal all this pain is an illusion.

I wouldn't give you two cents for all your fancy rules if, behind them, they didn't have a little bit of plain, ordinary, everyday kindness and a little looking out for the other fella, too.

Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.

Minds are like parachutes, they only function when they are open.

You can alter your life by altering the state of your mind.

The emigrants although of different parties and different religious sects all flew from persecution in pursuit of liberty.

Remember, the greater the opportunity, the fewer are those who see it.

When I cannot read, when I cannot think, when I cannot even pray, I can trust.

The supreme question about a work of art is out of how deep a life does it spring.

Think you're escaping and run into yourself. Longest way round is the shortest way home.

I was born to catch dragons in their dens And pick flowers To tell tales and laugh away the morning To drift and dream like a lazy stream And walk barefoot across sunshine days.

The power of excellence is overwhelming. It is always in demand, and nobody cares about its color.

The Marines don't have any race problems. They treat everybody like they're black.

There are four great measures for my administration - a reduction of tariff, an independent treasury, settlement of the Oregon boundary and acquisition of California.

One time we saw some hookers but when we got closer we realized it was Motley Crue.

Don't marry the person you think you can live with; marry only the individual you think you can't live without.