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 BALDWINLife is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time.
More James Baldwin Quotes
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The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions that have been hidden by the answers.
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Everyone wishes to be loved, but in the event, nearly no one can bear it. Everyone desires love but also finds it impossible to believe that he deserves it.
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There are so many ways of being despicable it quite makes one’s head spin. But the way to be really despicable is to be contemptuous of other people’s pain.
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It is astonishing the lengths to which a person, or a people, will go in order to avoid a truthful mirror.
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Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have.
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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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The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose.
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Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time.
JAMES BALDWIN -
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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People don’t have any mercy. They tear you limb from limb, in the name of love.
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Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.
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The moment we cease to hold each other, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.
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We all commit our crimes. The thing is to not lie about them.
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Any real change implies the breakup of the world as one has always known it, the loss of all that gave one an identity, the end of safety.
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Nobody is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart; for his purity, by definition, is unassailable.
JAMES BALDWIN