6 Quotes Tagged: 1994

Many of us persons of the tinted persuasion care about human rights and artistic freedom too.

I am 100 percent in favor of the intelligent use of drugs, and 1,000 percent against the thoughtless use of them, whether caffeine or LSD. And drugs are not central to my life.

"Yet the enslavement of Africans — over 20 percent of the population — served as the linchpin of American democracy; that is, the much-heralded stability and continuity of American democracy was predicated upon black oppression and degradation. Without the presence of black people in America, European-Americans would not be "white" — they would be only Irish, Italians, Poles, Welsh, and others engaged in class, ethnic, and gender struggles over resources and identity. What made America distinctly American for them was not simply the presence of unprecedented opportunities, but the struggle for seizing these opportunities in a new land in which black slavery and racial caste served as the floor upon which white class, ethnic, and gender struggles could be diffused and diverted. In other words, white poverty could be ignored and whites' paranoia of each other could be overlooked primarily owing to the distinctive American feature: the basic racial divide of black and white peoples. From 1776 to 1964… this racial divide would serve as a basic presupposition for the expansive functioning of American democracy, even as the concentration of wealth and power remained in the hands of a Few well-to-do white men."

… the major enemy of black survival in America has been and is neither oppression nor exploitation but rather the nihilistic threat — that is, loss of hope and absence of meaning. For as long as hope remains and meaning is preserved, the possibility of overcoming oppression stays alive. The self-fulfilling prophecy of the nihilistic threat is that without hope there can be no future, that without meaning there can be no struggle.

"Truth is one, unique, single; it is
indivisibly One.
And its Oneness, and the knowledge of
that oneness belongs to him; is
placed in him.
Impossible, impossible; it is aloofness,
estrangement, separation; he is known only
by them.
Knowledge of One is abstract; single,
indivisible.
To say one, and to say single is to reach
the attribute; but he, who is one, is beyond
attribute.
If I say "I," he sends back "I," in answer
to my "I". So, "he" is for you and not for
me.
And if I say Unity is Oneness for his
loneliness, for his being alone, then I
placed him in
creation; among things created.
And if I say single One, as number one; how
can he come
within
number?
And if I say, he is One for as the
result of being considered one, being proved
One–then I
placed limit on him; delimited
him."