Category Archives: Quotes

As every second post on this site is a quote. You’ll find a deep and broad variety of quotes under this category, which overlap with several other tags and categories. Many of the quotes are larded with links for deeper reading on the subject of the quote, or connections between the subject of the quotes and other people, things, or ideas. See the Taxonomies page for more about this category.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

Posted on February 11, 2022 | Leave a comment

Abdul-Jabbar, Kareem originally Ferdinand Lew(is) Alcindor: (b.1947) basketball player. Born in New York City, he reached a height of seven feet, one-and-three-eighths inches (two meters seventeen centimeters). During his college career at UCLA, the team lost only two games, and he led it to three national championships (1966-68). He then joined the Milwaukee Bucks; in 1975 he was traded to the Los Angeles Lakers. The dominant center of his time, in 1984 he surpassed Wilt Chamberlain’s career scoring total of 31,419 points. He also holds the record for the most field goals (15,837), ranks second for the most blocked shots (3,189) and games played (1,560), and ranks third for rebounds (17,440). He was voted Most Valuable Player a record six times.

Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.

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Bernard Coard on the Implications of Placement of West Indian Children in British “Educationally Sub-Normal” Schools

Posted on February 11, 2022 | Leave a comment

“The implications for the large number of West Indian children who get placed in ESN [Educationally Sub-Normal] school and who can never ‘escape’ back to normal schools are far reaching and permanent. As demonstrated above, the West Indian child’s educational level on leaving school will be very low. He will be eligible, on reason of his lack of qualifications and his assessment as being ESN, only for the jobs which really-ESN pupils are able to perform; namely, repetitive jobs of a menial kind, which involve little use of intelligence. This is what he or she can look forward to as a career! In turn, though his getting poor wages, poor housing, and having no motivation to better himself, his children can look forward to s similar educational experience and similar career prospect! No wonder E.J.B. Rose, who was Director of the Survey of Race Relations in Britain, and co-author of the report Colour and Citizenship, states that by the year 2000 Britain will probably have a Black helot class unless the educational system is radically altered.”

Excerpted from: Coard, Bernard. How the West Indian Child Is Made Educationally Sub-Normal in the British School System: 50th Anniversary Expanded Fifth Edition. Kingston, Jamaica: McDermott Publishing, 2021.

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Healthful Advice from the Great Satchel Paige

Posted on February 4, 2022 | Leave a comment

“If your stomach disputes you, lie down and pacify it with cool thoughts.”

Satchel Paige, “How to Keep Young,” Colliers, 13 June 1953

Excerpted from: Shapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.

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Wynton Marsalis

Posted on February 4, 2022 | Leave a comment

“Wynton Marsalis: (b. 1961) U.S. trumpeter and composer, a major figure in the renewal of interest in jazz. Born in New Orleans, Marsalis was a trumpet prodigy and was recognized as an important soloist in both the classical and jazz traditions at an early age. He joined Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers (1980-1982) before leading his own groups. As a composer he has written ballet and concert works and won the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for his oratorio Blood on the Fields.”

Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.

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Bernard Coard on the Experience of the Wrongly Classified Child

Posted on February 4, 2022 | Leave a comment

“The experience of being removed from a normal school and placed in the neighborhood ‘nut’ school, as everybody calls it, is a bitter one. The child feels deeply that racial discrimination and rejection have been practiced towards him by the authorities who have assessed him wrongly as being ESN [Educationally Sub-Normal]. Other Black children, who are young and unsure of themselves, may simply accept the judgement of themselves as being of low intelligence and give up any attempt to succeed academically. The immense influence of other people’s expectations in creating the child’s own self-image of his abilities and likely performance will be examined, with evidence, in Chapter 3.

On the other side of the coin, the teacher who is told by the educational ‘experts’ that a child is ESN, will obviously expect the child to be ESN. Therefore, the sort of work she will give the child, and the standard she will expect of him, will obviously be much lower than in a normal school. This means the child will learn much less than he is really capable of, and will be very frustrated day by day in the class room. That such children quite often ‘act up’ and become behaviour problems under these circumstances is to be expected”

Excerpted from: Coard, Bernard. How the West Indian Child Is Made Educationally Sub-Normal in the British School System: 50th Anniversary Expanded Fifth Edition. Kingston, Jamaica: McDermott Publishing, 2021.

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Mande Languages

Posted on February 1, 2022 | Leave a comment

“Mande Languages: Branch of the Niger-Congo family of African languages. Mande comprises more than 25 languages of West Africa with over 10 million speakers. The most significant subgroup is the Mandekan complex, a continuum of languages and dialects, including Malinke, Maninka, Bambara, and Dyula, spoken from Senegambia and Guinea east through Mali to Burkina Faso. Other major Mande languages are Soninke in Mali, Kpelle in Liberia, Susu in Guinea, and Mende in Sierra Leone.”

Excerpted/Adapted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.

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Paul Robeson on Picking His Battles

Posted on February 1, 2022 | Leave a comment

“The artist must elect to fight for freedom or slavery. I have made my choice. I had no alternative.”

Paul Robeson, Speech at antifascist rally, Royal Albert Hall, London, 24 June 1937

Excerpted from: Schapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.

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The Doubter’s Companion: Courtiers

Posted on January 28, 2022 | Leave a comment

“Courtiers: Instantly recognizable. Unchanged throughout history. These individuals live in the half-light, chasing power without purpose, prestige without responsibility. They travel in the shadow of those who have responsibility.

There are more courtiers in Western society today than perhaps at any other time in any other society. More even than in imperial China. It isn’t simply the crowds of White House staff of their equivalents around the presidents and prime ministers of other countries who count in this class. There are the lawyers, consultants, PR experts, and opinion-poll experts. They exist throughout the public and the private sectors and yet are no more than superficial decoration.

A corporatist society itself turns every technocrat who wishes to succeed into a courtier. Such highly structured systems find it almost impossible to reward actions over methods. And the corporation excludes the idea of individual responsibility. They are breeding grounds for those who seek power through manipulation.

The popular image of the courtier involves elaborate court dress, But the Jesuits were the most successful manipulators of power and they appeared in an anonymous uniform, similar to that of our discreet contemporary technocrats.”

Excerpted from: Saul, John Ralston. The Doubter’s Companion. New York: The Free Press, 1994.

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Argument

Posted on January 21, 2022 | Leave a comment

“Argument (noun): A disagreement of debate; argumentation, or the process of expression and interchange in disputation; a course of reasoning to demonstrate a truth or a falsehood, or a reason given as a proof or rebuttal; intended theme or rationale of a literary work; thrust; synopsis. Adj. argumentative; adv. argumentatively; n. argumentation, argumentativeness; v. argue.”

Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.

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7 Classical Heroes Who Visited the Underworld

Posted on January 21, 2022 | Leave a comment

“Aeneas * Odysseus * Orpheus * Dionysus * Heracles * Psyche * Theseus

Virgil has Aeneas descend with the sibyl into the underworld at the Sulphur-ridden crater of Avernus near Cumae to speak to his dead father. Odysseus makes it as far as the banks of the River Charon. However, Orpheus succeeds in charming Pluto and Persephone with his music and almost succeeds in extracting his lover Eurydice from the gates of Hell but on his return to the light gives birth to a mystery religion complete with a transformational initiation rite, hymns, and a priesthood who remain poor outcast wanderers, renouncing their taste for meat and women.

Dionysus’s descent feels like an earlier episode in this same half-understood Orphic religion, though dance replaces music and Dionysus is successful in rescuing his mother Semele and placing her in the heavens. Hercules is in Hades on a mission to steal the hound of hell (Cerberus), but again seems to follow in the spiritual footsteps of Orpheus by descending into the underworld via Eleusis and its mystery cult.

Looking beyond the Aegean, and this list of seven, are the much older stories of Gilgamesh’s journey to Hell and the Sumerian-Babylonian goddess Inanna’s descent.”

Excerpted from: Rogerson, Barnaby. Rogerson’s Book of Numbers: The Culture of Numbers–from 1,001 Nights to the Seven Wonders of the World. New York: Picador, 2013.

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