James Lecesne Quotes

I have been drawn to stories that are attempting to turn suffering into beauty.

Out of the huts of history's shame I rise.

When we have accepted the worst, we have nothing more to lose. And that automatically means we have everything to gain.

Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of the slave. I rise. I rise. I rise.

Oppression won't win, the light comes from within.

One of the most important functions of jazz has been to encourage a hope for freedom, for people living in situations of intolerance or struggle.

When will the day come that our dignity will be fully restored, when the purpose of our lives will no longer be merely to survive until the sun rises tomorrow!

Life ceases to be so oppressive: we are free to give our own lives meaning and purpose, free to redeem our suffering by making something of it.

We must remember that the people for whom this change represents a first taste of freedom and a new and brighter future did not allow their resolution to falter, no matter how great the suffering by which they bought this independence.

There we were, men who a few years before had been scorned, some of us in jail and many more of us very near it, now being the men to whom the people pinned their faith.

Blacks had survived every form of human debasement with ingenuity, self-reliance, a deep and ironic humor, a capacity for self-reinvention and a heroic fortitude. But we had no experience of wide-open freedom.

The thing I always try to hold onto with 'BoJack' and with 'Flaked' is that maybe there is a sliver of hope that they are going to turn it around. They are just having a tough time getting there. And that's the thing with 'BoJack' - he is obviously depressed.

There's a lot of oppressed people in Tottenham, but people in Tottenham also know how to turn pain into triumph.

At the moment of greatest love, there is greatest fear, and at the moment of enormous repression, there is resistance, and therefore a chance at revolutionary change.

The Shawshank Redemption' isn't a movie about a black guy and a white guy who become friends - it's a movie about freedom. At the end, the cathartic experience of seeing our own emotions reflected back to us, that's the purpose of storytelling.

I get a lot from people who are in oppressed situations and say they were gonna give up. A lot of people have reached out and said they were in bad situations and really need me to be successful.

Prisoners around the world have said that reading 'The Count of Monte Cristo' helped them get through their ordeal. That's something to aspire to.

My past made me who I am today. I can’t just pretend it never happened. But the biggest lesson I learnt from that, is that I can be an example for others who are still struggling! There’s always hope and help for everyone. I think it’s my responsibility to do that, to help. I always refer to this as the “moment of clarity”. It’s hard to explain what really happened, but it was a once in a lifetime kind of moment. I had reached my lowest point and I just knew things had to change quickly because there was just no other way, you know.

In order for the oppressed to be able to wage the struggle for their liberation, they must perceive the reality of oppression not as a closed world from which there is no exit , but as a limiting situation which they can transform.

Words are everything. Words give wings even to those who have been stamped upon, broken beyond all hope of repair.

As long as hope remains and meaning is preserved, the possibility of overcoming oppression stays alive.

I have had to experience so much stupidity, so many vices, so much error, so much nausea, disillusionment and sorrow, just in order to become a child again and begin anew. I had to experience despair, I had to sink to the greatest mental depths, to thoughts of suicide, in order to experience grace.

Crippled but free, I was blind all the time I was learning to see.

My people couldn't have survived slavery without having hope that it would get better. And there's some songs from the 19th and 18th century that say [sings], "By and by, by and by, I will lay down, this heavy load." And I mean, so many songs that spoke of hope and understand it better by and by. Amazing songs. So that the slaves, just knowing that he, she, did not have the right legally to walk within one inch away from where the slave owner dictated, and yet the same person, wrote and sang with fervor, "If the lord wants somebody, here am I, send me." It's amazing.

Your trials can release your Gifts and Dreams. Your trials can set you free.