“Negroes are Americans and their destiny is the country’s destiny. They have no other experience besides their experience on this continent and it is an experience which cannot be rejected, which yet remains to be embraced. If, as I believe, no American Negro exists who does not have his private Bigger Thomas living in the skull, then what most significantly fails to be illuminated here is the paradoxical adjustment which is perpetually made, the Negro being compelled to accept the fact that this dark and dangerous and unloved stranger is part of himself forever. Only this recognition sets him in any wise free and it is this, this necessary ability to contain and even, in the most honorable sense of the word, to exploit the “nigger,” which lends to Negro life its high element of the ironic and which causes the most well-meaning of their American critics to make such exhilarating errors when attempting to understand them.””
Quotes by Thomas Baldwin
“In my opinion any activity during which you can enjoy a beverage is not a sport. It is a party.””
“Where complaints are made of the soldiers, it almost always turns out that the women have insulted them most grossly, swearing at them, and the like. One unpleasant old Dutch woman came in, bursting with wrath, and told the whole narrative of her blameless life, diversified with sobs:”
“Where’s the skill in throwing a hook loaded with tempting bait into the general vicinity of lots of perpetually hungry creatures with brains the size of mustard seeds? You might as well go to a playground, scatter Reese’s peanut butter cups around, and club to death the first four year old foolish enough to approach, believing innocently that such treats are readily available in nature.””
Thomas Baldwin was an English author and theologian known for his contributions to both aeronautics and religious discourse in the late 18th century. His most notable work, "Airopaidia," published in ...