If 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.
JAMES A. BALDWINRage can only with difficulty, and never entirely, be brought under the domination of the intelligence, and therefore is not susceptible to any arguments whatsoever.
More James A. Baldwin Quotes
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The male cannot bear very much humiliation; and he really cannot bear it, it obliterates him.
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The determination to outwit one’s situation means that one has no models, only object lessons.
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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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You think your pains and heartbreaks are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. [and then you discover that others have suffered much more than you and your problems look good in comparison]
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One writes out of one thing only – one’s own experience.
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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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It is very nearly impossible… to become an educated person in a country so distrustful of the independent mind.
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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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The responsibility of a writer is to excavate the experience of the people who produced him.
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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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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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It is a terrible, an inexorable, law that one cannot deny the humanity of another without diminishing one’s own: in the face of one’s victim, one sees oneself.
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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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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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The world is before you, and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in.
JAMES A. BALDWIN