Trust life, and it will teach you, in joy and sorrow, all you need to know.
JAMES BALDWINHatred is always self hatred, and there is something suicidal about it.
More James Baldwin Quotes
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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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I can’t believe what you say, because I see what you do.
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If I am not what you say I am, then you are not who you think you are.
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History is not a procession of illustrious people. It’s about what happens to a people. Millions of anonymous people is what history is about.
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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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Nakedness has no color: this can come as news only to those who have never covered, or been covered by, another naked human being.
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Those kids aren’t dumb. But the people who run these schools want to make sure they don’t get smart: they are really teaching the kids to be slaves.
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All I know about music is that not many people ever really hear it.
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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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People can cry much easier than they can change.
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The role of the artist is exactly the same as the role of the lover. If I love you, I have to make you conscious of the things you don’t see.
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Do I really want to be integrated into a burning house?
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There is a fearful splendor in absolute desolation.
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Those who say it can’t be done are usually interrupted by others doing it.
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People pay for what they do, and still more for what they have allowed themselves to become. And they pay for it very simply; by the lives they lead.
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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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Education is indoctrination if you’re white – subjugation if you’re black.
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To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.
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Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.
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If a society permits one portion of its citizenry to be menaced or destroyed, then, very soon, no one in that society is safe.
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It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.
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The artistic image is not intended to represent the thing itself, but, rather, the reality of the force the thing contains.
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You were born where you were born and faced the future that you faced because you were black and for no other reason.
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Precisely at the point when you begin to develop a conscience you must find yourself at war with your society.
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The impossible is the least that one can demand.
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The moment we cease to hold each other, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.
JAMES BALDWIN