The place in which I’ll fit will not exist until I make it.
JAMES BALDWINThe impossible is the least that one can demand.
More James Baldwin Quotes
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The moment we cease to hold each other, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.
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The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose.
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The world is before you, and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in.
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Freedom is not something that anybody can be given. Freedom is something people take, and people are as free as they want to be.
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Most of us, no matter what we say, are walking in the dark, whistling in the dark.
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You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read.
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People who believe that they are strong-willed and the masters of their destiny can only continue to believe this by becoming specialists in self-deception.
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It’s a miracle to realize that somebody loves you.
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It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.
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Everyone wishes to be loved, but in the event, nearly no one can bear it. Everyone desires love but also finds it impossible to believe that he deserves it.
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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.
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Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.
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You were born where you were born and faced the future that you faced because you were black and for no other reason.
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There are few things under heaven more unnerving than the silent, accumulating contempt and hatred of a people.
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Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have.
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To be sensual, I think, is to respect and rejoice in the force of life, of life itself, and to be present in all that one does, from the effort of loving to the breaking of bread.
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When you’re writing you’re trying to find out something which you don’t know.
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Those kids aren’t dumb. But the people who run these schools want to make sure they don’t get smart: they are really teaching the kids to be slaves.
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Any real change implies the breakup of the world as one has always known it, the loss of all that gave one an identity, the end of safety.
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I want to be an honest man and a good writer.
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Precisely at the point when you begin to develop a conscience you must find yourself at war with your society.
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Nobody is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart; for his purity, by definition, is unassailable.
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Hatred is always self hatred, and there is something suicidal about it.
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I often wonder what I’d do if there weren’t any books in the world.
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There are so many ways of being despicable it quite makes one’s head spin. But the way to be really despicable is to be contemptuous of other people’s pain.
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All I know about music is that not many people ever really hear it.
JAMES BALDWIN