If we do not now dare everything, the fulfillment of that prophecy, re-created from the Bible in song by a slave, is upon us: God gave Noah the rainbow sign. No more water, fire next time.
JAMES A. BALDWINIf the word ‘integration’ means anything, this is what it means that we, with love, shall force our brothers to see themselves as they are, to cease fleeing from reality and begin to change it.
More James A. Baldwin Quotes
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It is impossible to pretend that you are not heir to, and therefore, however inadequately or unwillingly, responsible to, and for, the time and place that give you life — without becoming, at very best, a dangerously disoriented human being.
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It is very nearly impossible… to become an educated person in a country so distrustful of the independent mind.
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A child cannot be taught by anyone who despises him, and a child cannot afford to be fooled.
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The responsibility of a writer is to excavate the experience of the people who produced him.
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A devotion to humanity is… too easily equated with a devotion to a Cause, and Causes, as we know, are notoriously bloodthirsty.
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A man’s balance depends on the weight he carries between his legs.
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You have to decide who you are and force the world to deal with you, not with its idea of you.
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When the South has trouble with its Negroes – when the Negroes refuse to remain in their “place” – it blames “outside agitators” and “Northern interference.” When the nation has trouble with the Northern Negro, it blames the Kremlin.
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You want to write a sentence as clean as a bone. That is the goal.
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You write in order to change the world.
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I can’t believe what you say, because I see what you do.
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For these are all our children, we will all profit by or pay for whatthey become.
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You have to go the way your blood beats. If you don’t live the only life you have, you won’t live some other life, you won’t live any life at all.
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Remember, to hate, to be violent, is demeaning. It means you’re afraid of the other side of the coin — to love and be loved.
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It is astonishing the lengths to which a person, or a people, will go in order to avoid a truthful mirror.
JAMES A. BALDWIN