The purpose of education…is to create in a person the ability to look at the world for himself, to make his own decisions.
JAMES A. BALDWINTo accept one’s past – one’s history – is not the same thing as drowning in it; it is learning how to use it. An invented past can never be used; it cracks and crumbles under the pressures of life like clay in a season of drought.
More James A. Baldwin Quotes
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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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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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The real victim of bigotry is the white man who hides his weakness under his myth of superiority.
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Life is more important than art; that’s what makes art important.
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Remember, to hate, to be violent, is demeaning. It means you’re afraid of the other side of the coin — to love and be loved.
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… every human being is an unprecedented miracle.
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To accept one’s past – one’s history – is not the same thing as drowning in it; it is learning how to use it. An invented past can never be used; it cracks and crumbles under the pressures of life like clay in a season of drought.
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Drive to the heart of every answer and expose the question the answer hides.
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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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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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Be careful what you set your heart upon – for it will surely be yours.
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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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I met a lot of people in Europe. I even encountered myself.
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The world is before you, and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in.
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The determination to outwit one’s situation means that one has no models, only object lessons.
JAMES A. BALDWIN