Hatred, which could destroy so much, never failed to destroy the man who hated, and this was an immutable law.
JAMES BALDWINHistory is not a procession of illustrious people. It’s about what happens to a people. Millions of anonymous people is what history is about.
More James Baldwin Quotes
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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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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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All I know about music is that not many people ever really hear it.
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Perhaps he is a fool or a coward but almost everybody is one or the other and most people are both.
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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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We all commit our crimes. The thing is to not lie about them.
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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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The paradox of education is precisely this – that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated.
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If you cannot love me, I will die. Before you came I wanted to die, I have told you many times. It is cruel to have made me want to live only to make my death more bloody
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Artists are here to disturb the peace.
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True rebels after all, are as rare as true lovers,and in both cases, to mistake a fever for passion can destroy one’s life.
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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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American history is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful, and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it.
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If you’re treated a certain way you become a certain kind of person.
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The price one pays for pursuing any profession or calling is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side.
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When you’re writing you’re trying to find out something which you don’t know.
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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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Nothing is more desirable than to be released from an affliction, but nothing is more frightening than to be divested of a crutch.
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Do I really want to be integrated into a burning house?
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It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.
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People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.
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Those who say it can’t be done are usually interrupted by others doing it.
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People can’t, unhappily, invent their mooring posts, their lovers and their friends, anymore than they can invent their parents.
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I want to be an honest man and a good writer.
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No man is a devil in his own mind.
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The place in which I’ll fit will not exist until I make it.
JAMES BALDWIN