12 Quotes by C.L.R. James

Georges Lefebvre, the great contemporary historian of the French Revolution, who on occasion after occasion exhaustively examines all the available evidence and repeats that we do not know and will never know who were the real leaders of the French Revolution, nameless, obscure men, far removed from the legislators and the public orators.

In politics all abstract terms conceal treachery.

When history is written as it ought to be written, it is the moderation and long patience of the masses at which men will wonder, not their ferocity.

The patience and forbearance of the poor are among the strongest bulwarks of the rich.

What do they know of cricket who only cricket know?

There are and always will be some who, ashamed of the behaviour of their ancestors, try to prove that slavery was not 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.

Uninhibited, they wallowed with zest in the filth and mire of their political conceptions and needs, among the very leaders of their society, but nevertheless the very dregs of human civilisation and moral standards. A historian who finds excuses for such conduct by references to the supposed spirit of the times, or by omission, or by silence, shows thereby that his account of events is not to be trusted.

Constitutions are what they turn out to be.

An army is a miniature of the society which produces it.