34 Quotes by Cliff James

Look, see: the universe does nothing. Victim or monster, there is no one to help.  God is dead. We should have tried to do our best without him.

So, at the turn of the third millennium, you have chosen to base your principles on a collection of contradictory texts – written by various men years after the death of your man Jesus – that have been edited and selected out of hundreds of other documents, and bound together into one hotchpotch volume, under the orders of a political primate, Pope Damasus. And, you’re still content to condemn the living love I feel here and now, because of that dusty accident of bad editing? Why?

Have you ever wondered why we bury and cremate our dead? Nothing to do with hygiene, it’s just so we don’t have to see the reality of death. You know, the Zoroastrians used to leave their dead in open places for the birds to eat. Now that’s a far more honest way to go, don’t you agree? Everyone can see what happens. It makes us live our lives more potently. That’s how I want to go, at my end: openly. Not ashamed of death, but embracing it.

Openly supporting refugees today is like coming out as gay in the 1980s - kindness is in short supply.

How can we speak to each other like equals when one of us is holding a gun?

Truth is the first casualty of fascism. When the truth can be so easily disregarded, all hell follows.

One way or another, we spend our whole lives being conditioned into accepting some line or order, some position of domination or subjection. It’s hard to unlearn such hierarchy, to undo such control. It’s implicit.

The ripples from a stone thrown in ignorance are gathering pace.

I think there will be war before this generation is through.