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John Davidson

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That minister of ministers,
Imagination, gathers up
The undiscovered Universe,
Like jewels in a jasper cup.
--
There is a Dish to hold the Sea, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

 
John Davidson

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Adam Clayton Powell is a Christian minister, he’s the head of the Abyssinian Baptist Church, but at the same time, he’s more famous for his political struggling. And Dr. King is a Christian Minister, in Atlanta, Georgia, but he’s become more famous for being involved in the civil rights struggle. There’s another in New York, Reverend Galamison, I don’t know if you’ve heard of him out here. He’s a Christian Minister from Brooklyn, but has become famous for his fight against a segregated school system in Brooklyn. Reverend Clee, right here, is a Christian Minister, here in Detroit. He’s the head of the Freedom Now Party. All of these are Christian Ministers, but they don’t come to us as Christian Ministers. They come to us as fighters in some other category. I’m a Muslim minister the same as they are Christian Ministers I’m a Muslim minister. And I don’t believe in fighting today in any one front, but on all fronts. In fact, I’m a black Nationalist Freedom Fighter.

 
Malcolm (Malcolm Little) X
 

Adam Clayton Powell is a Christian minister, he’s the head of the Abyssinian Baptist Church, but at the same time, he’s more famous for his political struggling. And Dr. King is a Christian Minister, in Atlanta, Georgia, but he’s become more famous for being involved in the civil rights struggle. There’s another in New York, Reverend Galamison, I don’t know if you’ve heard of him out here. He’s a Christian Minister from Brooklyn, but has become famous for his fight against a segregated school system in Brooklyn. Reverend Clee, right here, is a Christian Minister, here in Detroit. He’s the head of the Freedom Now Party. All of these are Christian Ministers, but they don’t come to us as Christian Ministers. They come to us as fighters in some other category. I’m a Muslim minister the same as they are Christian Ministers I’m a Muslim minister. And I don’t believe in fighting today in any one front, but on all fronts. In fact, I’m a black Nationalist Freedom Fighter.

 
Malcolm X
 

He (Jasper Johns, fh) and I were each other’s first serious critics. Actually he was the first painter I ever shared ideas with, or had discussions with about painting. No, not the first. Cy Twombly was the first. But Cy and I were not critical. I did my work and he did his. Cy’s direction was always so personal that you could only discuss it after the fact. But Jasper and I literally traded ideas. He would say, ‘I’ve got a terrific idea for you, ‘ and then I’d have to find one for him. (remark on his cooperative relation with Jasper Johns, to his biographer Calvin Tomkins)

 
Robert Rauschenberg
 

I cannot without great astonishment — I might say without great insult to my intelligence — hear it attributed as a prime perfection and nobility of the natural and integral bodies of the universe that they are invariant, immutable, inalterable, etc., while on the other hand it is called a great imperfection to be alterable, generable, mutable, etc. For my part I consider the earth very noble and admirable precisely because of the diverse alterations, changes, generations, etc. that occur in it incessantly. If, not being subject to any changes, it were a vast desert of sand or a mountain of jasper, or if at the time of the flood the waters which covered it had frozen, and it had remained an enormous globe of ice where nothing was ever born or ever altered or changed, I should deem it a useless lump in the universe, devoid of activity and, in a word, superfluous and essentially non-existent. This is exactly the difference between a living animal and a dead one; and I say the same of the moon, of Jupiter, and of all other world globes.
The deeper I go in considering the vanities of popular reasoning, the lighter and more foolish I find them. What greater stupidity can be imagined than that of calling jewels, silver, and gold "precious," and earth and soil "base"? People who do this ought to remember that if there were as great a scarcity of soil as of jewels or precious metals, there would not be a prince who would not spend a bushel of diamonds and rubies and a cartload of gold just to have enough earth to plant a jasmine in a little pot, or to sow an orange seed and watch it sprout, grow, and produce its handsome leaves, its fragrant flowers, and fine fruit. It is scarcity and plenty that make the vulgar take things to be precious or worthless; they call a diamond very beautiful because it is like pure water, and then would not exchange one for ten barrels of water. Those who so greatly exalt incorruptibility, inalterability, etc. are reduced to talking this way, I believe, by their great desire to go on living, and by the terror they have of death. They do not reflect that if men were immortal, they themselves would never have come into the world. Such men really deserve to encounter a Medusa's head which would transmute them into statues of jasper or of diamond, and thus make them more perfect than they are.

 
Galileo Galilei
 

The first woman minister, Antoinette Brown, had to meet ridicule and opposition that can hardly be conceived to-day. Now there are women ministers, east and west, all over the country.

 
Lucy Stone
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