The world is before you, and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in.
JAMES A. BALDWINIt is astonishing the lengths to which a person, or a people, will go in order to avoid a truthful mirror.
More James A. Baldwin Quotes
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I met a lot of people in Europe. I even encountered myself.
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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.
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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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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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It is very nearly impossible… to become an educated person in a country so distrustful of the independent mind.
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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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If the word ‘integration’ means anything, this is what it means that we, with love, shall force our brothers to see themselves as they are, to cease fleeing from reality and begin to change it.
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A man’s balance depends on the weight he carries between his legs.
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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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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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I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am also, much more than that. So are we all.
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You have to go the way your blood beats. If you don’t live the only life you have, you won’t live some other life, you won’t live any life at all.
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You write in order to change the world.
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Artists are here to disturb the peace.
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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.
JAMES A. BALDWIN