C L R James

Quotes

1. If you are not their slaves, you are rebels.

   p. 307

2. 

   Compared with what their masters had done to them in cold blood, what [the slaves] did was negligible, and they were spurred on by the ferocity with which the whites in Le Cap treated all slave prisoners who fell into their hands.

   p. 89

3. 

   From their French masters, [the slaves] had known rape, torture, degradation, and, at the slightest provocation, death. They returned in kind. For two centuries the higher civilization had shown them that power was used for wreaking your will on those whom you controlled. Now that they held power they did as they had been taught.

   p. 88

4. 

   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.

   p. 283

5. 

   Christopher Columbus landed first in the New World at the island of San Salvador, and after praising God enquired urgently for gold.

   p. 3

6. 

   There are and always will be some who, ashamed of the behavior of their ancestors, try to prove that slavery wasn't so bad after all, that its evils and its cruelty were the exaggerations of propagandists and not the habitual lot of the slaves. Men will say (and accept) anything in order to foster national pride or soothe a troubled conscience.

   p. 13

7. 

   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.

   p. 88

8. 

   The rich are only defeated when running for their lives.

   p. 77

9. 

   Dissimulation is the refuge of the slave.

   p. 334

That’s all the quotes.

9 quotes in the collection · come back when we add more