Artists are here to disturb the peace.
JAMES A. BALDWINTo accept one’s past – one’s history – is not the same thing as drowning in it; it is learning how to use it. An invented past can never be used; it cracks and crumbles under the pressures of life like clay in a season of drought.
More James A. Baldwin Quotes
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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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There are few things more dreadful than dealing with a man who knows he is going under, in his own eyes, and in the eyes of others. Nothing can help that man. What is left of that man flees from what is left of human attention.
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The writer’s greed is appalling. He wants, or seems to want, everything and practically everybody, in another sense, and at the same time, he needs no one at all.
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The reason people think it’s important to be white is that they think it’s important not to be black.
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If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of Him.
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There is never time in the future in which we will work out our salvation. The challenge is in the moment; the time is always now.
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Life is more important than art; that’s what makes art important.
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Rage can only with difficulty, and never entirely, be brought under the domination of the intelligence, and therefore is not susceptible to any arguments whatsoever.
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Be careful what you set your heart upon – for it will surely be yours.
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I think Americans are terrified of feeling anything. I never met a people more infantile in my life.
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The writer’s only real task: to recreate out of the disorder of life that order which is art
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The male cannot bear very much humiliation; and he really cannot bear it, it obliterates him.
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At four o’clock in the morning, when everyone is drunk enough, then extraordinary things can happen.
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The wretched of the earth do not decide to become extinct, they resolve, on the contrary, to multiply: life is their weapon against life, life is all that they have.
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Hatred destroys the person who hates.
JAMES A. BALDWIN