James Baldwin on emotion

Freedom is not something that anybody can be given; freedom is something people take and people are as free as they want to be.

Money, it turned out, was exactly like sex. You thought of nothing else if you didn’t have it and thought of other things if you did.

I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.

Mankind are governed more by their feelings than by reason.

Samuel Adams1722–1803Letter to Samuel Cooper (30 April 1776)

I am very conscious of the fact that our feelings and strivings are often contradictory and obscure and that they cannot be expressed in easy and simple formulas.

Albert Einstein1879–1955Why Socialism? (1949)

Never apologize for showing feeling, my friend. Remember that when you do so, you apologize for truth.

Benjamin Disraeli1804–1881Contarini Fleming (1832), Part 1, Chapter 13