29 quotes
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.
The Black Jacobins (1938)
Christopher Columbus landed first in the New World at the island of San Salvador, and after praising God enquired urgently for gold.
The Black Jacobins (1938)
Here, on the cricket field if nowhere else, all men in the island are equal, and we are the best men in the island.
Beyond a Boundary (1963)
The rich are only defeated when running for their lives.
The Black Jacobins (1938)
If you are not their slaves, you are rebels.
The Black Jacobins (1938)
Dissimulation is the refuge of the slave.
The Black Jacobins (1938)
The first recorded date in European history is 776 B.C., the date of the first Olympic Games.
Beyond a Boundary (1963)
Before very long I acquired a discipline for which the only name is Puritan. I never cheated, I never appealed for a decision unless I thought the batsman was out.
Beyond a Boundary (1963)
Respectability was not an ideal, it was an armour.
Beyond a Boundary (1963)
I do not want to get liberated from them [memories of racialism]. I would consider liberation from them a grievous loss, irreparable.
Beyond a Boundary (1963)
It is an historical commonplace that social explosions take place when most of the fundamental causes of dissatisfaction have been removed and only a few remain. This is the result of a feeling of power.
Beyond a Boundary (1963)
Body-line was not an incident, it was not an accident, it was not a temporary aberration. It was the violence and ferocity of our age expressing itself in cricket.
Beyond a Boundary (1966)
There can be raw pain and bleeding where so many thousands see the inevitable ups and downs of only a game.
Beyond a Boundary (1963)
So it was that I became one of those dark men whose 'surest sign of ... having arrived is the fact that he keeps company with people lighter in complexion than himself'.
Beyond a Boundary (1963)
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.
The Black Jacobins (1938)
The most striking development of the great depression of 1929 is a profound skepticism of the future of contemporary society among large sections of the American people.
Cricket is first and foremost a dramatic spectacle. It belongs with theatre, ballet, opera and the dance.
Beyond a Boundary (1963)
Cricket had plunged me into politics long before I was aware of it. When I did turn to politics I did not have too much to learn.
Beyond a Boundary (1963)
Cricket is an art, not a bastard or a poor relation, but a full member of the community. (...) Cricket is first and foremost a dramatic spectacle. It belong with the theatre, ballet, opera and dance.
Beyond a Boundary (1963)
Dickens saw Victorian England always with the eyres of a pre-Victorian. His ideal England was the England of Hazlitt and of Pickwick.
Beyond a Boundary (1963)