… every human being is an unprecedented miracle.
JAMES A. BALDWINUnless a writer is extremely old when he dies, in which case he has probably become a neglected institution, his death must always seem untimely.
More James A. Baldwin Quotes
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There is a ‘sanctity’ involved with bringing a child into this world: it is better than bombing one out of it.
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I must oppose any attempt that Negroes may make to do to others what has been done to them. . . . I know the spiritual wasteland to which that road leads . . . whoever debases others is debasing himself.
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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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Artists are here to disturb the peace.
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The reason people think it’s important to be white is that they think it’s important not to be black.
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The real victim of bigotry is the white man who hides his weakness under his myth of superiority.
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You want to write a sentence as clean as a bone. That is the goal.
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I met a lot of people in Europe. I even encountered myself.
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It is impossible to pretend that you are not heir to, and therefore, however inadequately or unwillingly, responsible to, and for, the time and place that give you life — without becoming, at very best, a dangerously disoriented human being.
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The determination to outwit one’s situation means that one has no models, only object lessons.
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The purpose of education…is to create in a person the ability to look at the world for himself, to make his own decisions.
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The wretched of the earth do not decide to become extinct, they resolve, on the contrary, to multiply: life is their weapon against life, life is all that they have.
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And I was yet aware that this was only a moment, that the world waited outside, as hungry as a tiger, and that trouble stretched above us, longer than the sky.
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I think Americans are terrified of feeling anything. I never met a people more infantile in my life.
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There is never time in the future in which we will work out our salvation. The challenge is in the moment; the time is always now.
JAMES A. BALDWIN