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. BALDWINThere 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.
More James A. Baldwin Quotes
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A man’s balance depends on the weight he carries between his legs.
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You want to write a sentence as clean as a bone. That is the goal.
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There is a ‘sanctity’ involved with bringing a child into this world: it is better than bombing one out of it.
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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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Drive to the heart of every answer and expose the question the answer hides.
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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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Be careful what you set your heart upon – for it will surely be yours.
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To 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.
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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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If you think too far ahead, if you even try to think too far ahead, you’ll never make it.
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And I was yet aware that this was only a moment, that the world waited outside, as hungry as a tiger, and that trouble stretched above us, longer than the sky.
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I must oppose any attempt that Negroes may make to do to others what has been done to them. . . . I know the spiritual wasteland to which that road leads . . . whoever debases others is debasing himself.
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There is no way of conveying to the corpse the reasons you have made him one–you have the corpse, and you are, thereafter, at themercy of a fact which missed the truth, which means that the corpse has you.
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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 world is before you, and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in.
JAMES A. BALDWIN