It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.
JAMES BALDWINPeople 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.
More James Baldwin Quotes
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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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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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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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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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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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If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of Him.
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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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The impossible is the least that one can demand.
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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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Those kids aren’t dumb. But the people who run these schools want to make sure they don’t get smart: they are really teaching the kids to be slaves.
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Do I really want to be integrated into a burning house?
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Hatred is always self hatred, and there is something suicidal about it.
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The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose.
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Confusion is a luxury which only the very, very young can possibly afford and you are not that young anymore.
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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 is mostly divided between madmen who remember and madmen who forget. Heroes are rare.
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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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For these are all our children, we will all profit by or pay for what they become.
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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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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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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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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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The artistic image is not intended to represent the thing itself, but, rather, the reality of the force the thing contains.
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It’s a miracle to realize that somebody loves you.
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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