I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am also so much more than that. So are we all.
JAMES BALDWINPrecisely at the point when you begin to develop a conscience you must find yourself at war with your society.
More James Baldwin Quotes
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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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No one is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart: for his purity, by definition, is unassailable.
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The paradox of education is precisely this – that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated.
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Love brought you here. If you trusted love this far, don’t panic now.
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I can’t believe what you say, because I see what you do.
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Education is indoctrination if you’re white – subjugation if you’re black.
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Literature is indispensable to the world.
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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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There are too many things we do not wish to know about ourselves.
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Guilt is a luxury that we can no longer afford.
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The impossible is the least that one can demand.
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Our crown has already been bought and paid for. All we have to do is wear it.
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The victim who is able to articulate the situation of the victim has ceased to be a victim: he or she has become a threat.
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Youth must be the worst time in anybody’s life.
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All art is a kind of confession, more or less oblique.
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You don’t have a home until you leave it and then, when you have left it, you never can go back.
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There are people in the world for whom “coming along” is a perpetual process, people who are destined never to arrive.
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I want to be an honest man and a good writer.
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It is easy to proclaim all souls equal in the sight of God; it is hard to make men equal on earth in the sight of men.
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Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.
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People don’t have any mercy. They tear you limb from limb, in the name of love.
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You write in order to change the world, if you alter, even by a millimeter, the way people look at reality, then you can change it.
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Do I really want to be integrated into a burning house?
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Artists are here to disturb the peace.
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Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.
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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.
JAMES BALDWIN