It is astonishing the lengths to which a person, or a people, will go in order to avoid a truthful mirror.
JAMES BALDWINNothing is more desirable than to be released from an affliction, but nothing is more frightening than to be divested of a crutch.
More James Baldwin Quotes
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All I know about music is that not many people ever really hear it.
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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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People can cry much easier than they can change.
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For nothing is more unbearable, once one has it, than freedom.
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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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The price one pays for pursuing any profession or calling is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side.
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I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am also so much more than that. So are we all.
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I often wonder what I’d do if there weren’t any books in the world.
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People who believe that they are strong-willed and the masters of their destiny can only continue to believe this by becoming specialists in self-deception.
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I can’t believe what you say, because I see what you do.
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It’s a miracle to realize that somebody loves you.
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Guilt is a luxury that we can no longer afford.
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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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I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.
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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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You have to go the way your blood beats. If you don’t live the only life you have, you won’t live some other life, you won’t live any life at all.
JAMES BALDWIN -
Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.
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Our crown has already been bought and paid for. All we have to do is wear it.
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Please try to remember that what they believe, as well as what they do and cause you to endure does not testify to your inferiority but to their inhumanity.
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No man is a devil in his own mind.
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Everybody’s journey is individual.
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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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The power of the white world is threatened whenever a black man refuses to accept the white world’s definitions.
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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.
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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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For these are all our children, we will all profit by or pay for what they become.
JAMES BALDWIN