Saw 'Best of Enemies' last night and one of the many top things about it was the playing of great humanist James Baldwin by Syrus Lowe (tingled at his depiction of the Cambridge Union debate). It's as good an excuse as any to remind you of some of Baldwin's beautiful words...

‘Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced. … Most of us are about as eager to change as we were to be born, and go through our changes in a similar state of shock.'

‘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.’

‘Words like 'freedom,' 'justice,' 'democracy' are not common concepts; on the contrary, they are rare. People are not born knowing what these are. It takes enormous and, above all, individual effort to arrive at the respect for other people that these words imply.’