I'm optimistic about the future, but not about the future of this civilization. I'm optimistic about the civilization which will replace this one.

—James Baldwin

optimism future civilization

About James Baldwin

Portrait of James Baldwin

James Arthur Baldwin (né Jones; August 2, 1924 – December 1, 1987) was an American writer and civil rights activist who garnered acclaim for his essays, novels, plays, and poems. His 1953 novel Go Tell It on the Mountain has been ranked by Time magazine as one of the top...

More quotations from James Baldwin

I met a lot of people in Europe. I even encountered myself.

—James Baldwin

self-knowledge travel Europe

The price one pays for pursuing any profession or calling is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side.

—James Baldwin

knowledge work ugliness commerce

Any real change implies the breakup of the world as one has always known it, the loss of all that gave one an identity, the end of safety.

—James Baldwin

knowledge safety identity change world

There is no music like that music, no drama like the drama of the saints rejoicing, the sinners moaning, the tambourines racing, and all those voices coming together and crying holy unto the Lord.… I have never seen anything to equal the fire and excitement that sometimes, without warning, fill a church, causing the church, as Leadbelly and so many others have testified, to "rock.

—James Baldwin

sin music church excitement drama rock and roll

I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.

—James Baldwin in The Fire Next Time

pain hatred reasons

More quotations tagged with “civilization”

Art is like a border of flowers along the course of civilization.

—Lincoln Steffens

art flowers civilization

Making weapons is what we know how to do best, the supreme achievement of late-twentieth-century American civilization. To this blessed work we assign our finest intellect and the largest share of our treasure, and in the magnificence of an aircraft carrier or a cruise missile we find our moral and aesthetic equivalent of the Sistine ceiling and Chartres Cathedral.

—Lewis Lapham

weapons morality achievement America civilization missiles

He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would fully suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, senseless brutality, deplorable love-of-country stance, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action! It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.

—Albert Einstein

war heroism morality music violence patriotism killing murder civilization

Probably no nation is rich enough to pay for both war and civilization. We must make our choice; we cannot have both.

—Abraham Flexner

war choice nations wealth civilization

A civilization which tends to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of a fortunate few, and to make of others mere human machines, must inevitably evolve anarchy and bring destruction.

—Henry George

power destruction luck wealth civilization machines anarchy

History

12 Apr 2015 Added