C. L. R. James Quotes

17 Sourced Quotes

The process of revolution is essentially the process of people finding themselves.

C. L. R. James
Our complete emancipation will mean that we shall see ourselves first as citizens of the world, and only secondarily as colored people who see all history from the point of view of our own deliverance.

C. L. R. James
In revolution, when the ceaseless slow accumulation of centuries bursts into volcanic eruption, the meteoric flares and flights above are a meaningless chaos and lend themselves to infinite caprice and romanticism unless the observer sees them always as projections of the sub-soil from which they came.

C. L. R. James
It is from America's urban blacks that many people all over the world have historically gained a consciousness of the problems that black people suffer and their attempts to overcome them

C. L. R. James
The revolution, precisely because it is a revolution, demands all things for all men. It is an attempt to leap from the realm of objective necessity to the realm of objective freedom.

C. L. R. James
Man is not only what he does but what he thinks and what he aims at.

C. L. R. James
Great men make history, but only such history as it is possible for them to make. Their freedom of achievement is limited by the necessities of their environment.

C. L. R. James
Africans and people of African descent, especially those who have been poisoned by British imperialist education, needed a lesson. They have got it. Every succeeding day shows exactly the real motives which move imperialism in its contact with Africa, shows the incredible savagery and duplicity of European imperialism in its quest for markets and raw materials. Let the lesson sink in deep.

C. L. R. James
It is over one hundred years since the abolition of slavery. The Negro people in the United States have taken plenty and they have reached a stage where they have decided that they are not going to take any more.

C. L. R. James
The cruelties of property and privilege are always more ferocious than the revenges of poverty and oppression. For the one aims at perpetuating resented injustice, the other is merely a momentary passion soon appeased.

C. L. R. James
The race question is subsidiary to the class question in politics, and to think of imperialism in terms of race is disastrous. But to neglect the racial factor as merely incidental is an error only less grave than to make it fundamental.

C. L. R. James
There can be raw pain and bleeding where so many thousands see the inevitable ups and downs of only a game.

C. L. R. James
Property-owners are the most energetic flag-waggers and patriots in every country, but only so long as they enjoy their possessions: to safeguard those they desert God, King and Country in a twinkling.

C. L. R. James
When history is written as it ought to be written, it is the moderation and long patience of the masses at which men will wonder, not their ferocity.

C. L. R. James
Cricket is first and foremost a dramatic spectacle. It belongs with theatre, ballet, opera and the dance.

C. L. R. James
The patience and forbearance of the poor are among the strongest bulwarks of the rich.

C. L. R. James
In politics all abstract terms conceal treachery.

C. L. R. James