People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.
JAMES BALDWINIf I am not what you say I am, then you are not who you think you are.
More James Baldwin Quotes
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Youth must be the worst time in anybody’s life.
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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.
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The victim who is able to articulate the situation of the victim has ceased to be a victim: he or she has become a threat.
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To be sensual, I think, is to respect and rejoice in the force of life, of life itself, and to be present in all that one does, from the effort of loving to the breaking of bread.
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All I know about music is that not many people ever really hear it.
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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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You don’t have a home until you leave it and then, when you have left it, you never can go back.
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There are few things under heaven more unnerving than the silent, accumulating contempt and hatred of a people.
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The world changes according to the way people see it, and if you alter, even by a millimeter, the way a person looks at reality, then you can change it.
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Do I really want to be integrated into a burning house?
JAMES BALDWIN -
Trust life, and it will teach you, in joy and sorrow, all you need to know.
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Hatred, which could destroy so much, never failed to destroy the man who hated, and this was an immutable law.
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People who treat other people as less than human must not be surprised when the bread they have cast on the waters comes floating back to them, poisoned.
JAMES BALDWIN -
It is astonishing the lengths to which a person, or a people, will go in order to avoid a truthful mirror.
JAMES BALDWIN -
Freedom is not something that anybody can be given. Freedom is something people take, and people are as free as they want to be.
JAMES BALDWIN