Dbady

“If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!”
― Rudyard Kipling, If: A Father's Advice to His Son

“Introspection,” which took four takes to produce an acceptable version, was unlike anything that came before it. It embodied the most radical elements of Monk’s approach to composition and improvisation.36”
― Robin D.G. Kelley, Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original

“Césaires (Aimé and Suzanne) were creative innovators of surrealism—that they actually introduced fresh surrealist ideas to Breton and his colleagues. I don’t think it is too much to argue that the Césaires not only embraced surrealism—independently of the Paris Group, I might add—but also expanded it, enlarged its perspectives, and contributed enormously to theorizing the “domain of the Marvelous.” Aimé Césaire, after all, has never denied his surrealist leanings. As he explains: “Surrealism provided me with what I had been confusedly searching for. I have accepted it joyfully because in it I have found more of a confirmation than a revelation.” Surrealism, he explained, helped him to summon up powerful unconscious forces. “This, for”
― Robin D.G. Kelley, Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination

“Too often, our standards for evaluating social movements pivot around whether or not they "succeeded" in realizing their visions rather than on the merits or power of the visions themselves. By such a measure, virtually every radical movement failed because the basic power relations they sought to change remained pretty much intact. And yet it is precisely these alternative visions and dreams that inspire new generations to struggle for change.”
― Robin D.G. Kelley, Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination