Zayde #JamesBaldwin got it right!!

#HawkPodcast

#FreePalestine 🇵🇸

https://m.youtube.com/shorts/Hv0_Z0bEYAE

James Baldwin on How to Live Through Your Darkest Hour and Life as a Moral Obligation to the Universe

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://www.themarginalian.org/2026/06/10/james-baldwin-nothing-personal-4-am/

You write in order to change the world, knowing perfectly well that you probably can't... The world changes according to the way people see it, and if you alter, even by a millimeter, the way a person looks at reality, then you can change it.
-- James Baldwin

⬆ #Wisdom #Quotes #JamesBaldwin #Reality #Writing

⬇ #Photography #Panorama #Morning #Mists #Fogbow #LakeSantaFe #Florida

#JamesBaldwin #WilliamBuckley #CambridgeUniversity #1965

I just feel this needs to be shared often and remembered always.

https://youtu.be/5Tek9h3a5wQ?si=V7chFEYxZ7cIGCG6

A civilization is not destroyed by wicked people; it is not necessary that people be wicked but only that they be spineless.
-- James Baldwin (The Fire Next Time)

⬆ #Wisdom #Quotes #JamesBaldwin #Civilization #Evil

⬇ #Photography #Panorama #Panopainting #Kayaks #Everglades #Florida

Spiritless men

Fires can’t be made with dead embers, nor can enthusiasm be stirred by spiritless men. Enthusiasm in our daily work lightens effort and turns even labor into pleasant tasks.

slip:4a732.

Quotations are difficult

Most of my blog posts are either a quotation which I leave to stand on its own, or a usually-longer-length pull-quote with a citation and my commentary. Things around here are very intentional. The freestanding quotations are meant to leave all the context and analysis to you, Dear Reader, without any of my thoughts coloring your thoughts. You may very well try to learn more about me based on my selections, but I’m trying to recreate—for your enjoyment—the experience of discovering the quotation. The pull-quotes both expose the seed of my reflections and try to lure you to something in the world I’d like to highlight.

Fires can’t be made with dead embers, nor can enthusiasm be stirred by spiritless men.

But there are the vanishing rare two-fer posts like today. There. Have a quote. And…

I discovered this quote in a book, (p17 of Get Together, 2019 Richardson et al if you must know.) I know this will surprise you, but I have a well-practiced process for “capturing” quotes. In this case, the vague attribution tickled a memory; “I’m pretty sure I have a quote from James Baldwin…” I checked, and I do. “I wonder if this quote is that Baldwin…”

What’s the simplest thing that could possibly work? Just type the quote, in quotes, into a search engine… and Quote Investigator has a page for it. (Going directly to Quote Investigator is step two, by the way, if the search fails. I search generally, first, because it often finds the phrase in the original source material right out of the gate.) It turns out that this quote has a second sentence!

Fires can’t be made with dead embers, nor can enthusiasm be stirred by spiritless men. Enthusiasm in our daily work lightens effort and turns even labor into pleasant tasks.

slip:4a732.

Oh, nice! I like that even more than the one I stumbled on. But who is this “Baldwin”… and then I read the Quote Investigator page. Their conclusion is ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ . It’s been attributed four different ways for nearly 90 years. And now I’m wondering if my James Baldwin quote— which is #380 in my collection of 700+ so it’s pretty old, although I think I recall where I got it, from Gaping Void . . . but don’t go there! It’s a wonderland rabbit hole of decades of cartoons. I digress. And I’m having images of the book authors doing this same rabbit hole deep dive.

Fine, executive decision: I’ll stick with “Baldwin.” But that makes for this wonky entry in my slipbox index of people… Now I have “Baldwin, James” and “Baldwin.” But you know what? I’m never going to forget about this now, if I ever look at that index slip again.

So now you know: When you see me casually drop a freestanding quote here, it’s not in truth casually.

ɕ

Stability

A society must assume that it is stable, but the artist must know, and he must let us know, that there is nothing stable under heaven.

slip:4a380.