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.
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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Precisely at the point when you begin to develop a conscience you must find yourself at war with your society.
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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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Do I really want to be integrated into a burning house?
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Youth must be the worst time in anybody’s life.
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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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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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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 I am not what you say I am, then you are not who you think you are.
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There are too many things we do not wish to know about ourselves.
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Hatred is always self hatred, and there is something suicidal about it.
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Neither love nor terror makes one blind: indifference makes one blind.
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People are too various to be treated so lightly. I am too various to be trusted.
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The impossible is the least that one can demand.
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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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People don’t have any mercy. They tear you limb from limb, in the name of love.
JAMES BALDWIN