The real victim of bigotry is the white man who hides his weakness under his myth of superiority.
JAMES A. BALDWINIt is very nearly impossible… to become an educated person in a country so distrustful of the independent mind.
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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Life is more important than art; that’s what makes art important.
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It is a terrible, an inexorable, law that one cannot deny the humanity of another without diminishing one’s own: in the face of one’s victim, one sees oneself.
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There is no way of conveying to the corpse the reasons you have made him one–you have the corpse, and you are, thereafter, at themercy of a fact which missed the truth, which means that the corpse has you.
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A devotion to humanity is… too easily equated with a devotion to a Cause, and Causes, as we know, are notoriously bloodthirsty.
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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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There are few things more dreadful than dealing with a man who knows he is going under, in his own eyes, and in the eyes of others. Nothing can help that man. What is left of that man flees from what is left of human attention.
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Be careful what you set your heart upon – for it will surely be yours.
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One writes out of one thing only – one’s own experience.
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You have to decide who you are and force the world to deal with you, not with its idea of you.
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If we do not now dare everything, the fulfillment of that prophecy, re-created from the Bible in song by a slave, is upon us: God gave Noah the rainbow sign. No more water, fire next time.
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If you think too far ahead, if you even try to think too far ahead, you’ll never make it.
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You think your pains and heartbreaks are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. [and then you discover that others have suffered much more than you and your problems look good in comparison]
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I can’t believe what you say, because I see what you do.
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You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read.
JAMES A. BALDWIN